Originally released on Appalachia Waltz featuring Mark O'Connor, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer, Sony Classical
Can be heard on Mark O'Connor's Crossing Bridges OMAC Records
#Mark O'Connor #Mark O'Connor Musik International
Other versions can be heard on Mark O'Connor's Crossing Bridges, Duo by Mark and Maggie O’Connor OMAC Records and The Essential Mark O’Connor Sony Classical
Catalogue Number MO104C
Copyright © 1993 by Mark O’Connor Music International
For more information on violinist and composer Mark O'Connor, O’Connor String Camps, Touring Ensembles, Discography, Bio, Repertoire and more, please visit
SKU: HL.14001678
SKU: HL.14042754
ISBN 9780711965447.
A series of popular music for working string quartets. Light enjoyable repertoire pieces and entertaining encores. Each folio contains five pieces. Contents: 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', 'Candle In The Wind', '(Everything I Do) IDo It For You', 'Killing Me Softly With His Song', 'Without You'.
SKU: HL.49045822
ISBN 9781540024749. UPC: 888680737764. 9.25x12.0x0.29 inches.
The Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated not to Rudolphe Kreutzer (who never performed it) but to George Bridgetower, a famed 18th-century Afro-European concert violinist. In an early draft, Beethoven jokingly labeled the piece in starkly racialized terms: Sonata Mulattica composed for the mulatto Brischdauer, big wild mulatto composer.Beethoven and Bridgetower performed the premiere, which was by all accounts a success, and even featuring some improvised embellishment by the violinist. While celebrating afterwards, the two quarreled about what Beethoven construed as Bridgetower's insult of a female acquaintance; the composer then revoked the original dedication, adding Kreutzer's name instead. The work gained acclaim, while Bridgetower's career languished; he eventually died in poverty.Bridgetower has been the subject of considerable research and speculation, most notably in poet Rita Dove's book, Sonata Mulattica. From our 21st-century vantage, considering Bridgetower's unique circumstance, we can only see him as an ambiguous figure who, in embodying difference, provoked inspiration, fantasy, desire, anger and, finally, erasure.My piece is a collection of imaginings about George Bridgetower. It is not programmatic, but it takes on an episodic character, assembled from contrasting fragments. The dance rhythms, recurring figures and gestural contours are intended to feature the embodied expertise and expressivity of the performers, who at times must access liminal sounds and execute complex synchronies. I am grateful to Jenny Koh and Shai Wosner for involving me in their beautiful, virtuosic music-making.
SKU: HL.14028339
8.5x11.75x0.088 inches.
'Tis Time I Think For Soprano And String Quartet was commissioned by The Housman Society for the centenary of the publication of 'A Shropshire Lad' by A.E. Housman. Duration 15 minutes.
SKU: HL.49045639
ISBN 9781540004796. UPC: 888680710774. 9.5x12.0x0.37 inches.
Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music.My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach's D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern.My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl.
SKU: HL.48024136
ISBN 9781784543211.
'Discover' Level: An introduction to quartet ensemble playing for string players of grade 1-3 standard. Familiar keys, common rhythms and transparent musical forms ensure the short pieces and miniatures featured within Discover are accessible to all. Emphasis is firmly focussed on playing together as a unit. Contents: Mortimer: Intergalactic Messaging Mortimer: Sleepy Sawyers: Copy Cats Scolding: Clifton Bridge Hewitt Jones: Ghost Train Kershaw: Catch Me If You Can Kershaw: Lullaby for Lilah Norton: A Relaxed Mood K. & H. Colledge: Stargazing Score, parts and CD.
SKU: GI.G-003118
Scripture: Psalm 102, Psalm 30.
The first piece is inspired by Psalm 102:1, “Hear my prayer, O Lord.†This piece is a passacaglia, which is a series of variations over a basso ostinato. It begins with a pleading theme played by the solo violin. An optional bridge connects to the next psalm. In the second piece, Alan takes his inspiration from Psalm 30:11, “You have turned my mourning into dancing.†This psalm is set as a tambourin and variants. A tambourin is a duple-meter dance of Provençal origin, often with a drum-like rhythm. The psalm concludes with a boisterous fiddler’s reel. .
