Set of parts for String Quartet No.4 by Poul Ruders dating from 2012. Score available: WH31600 Programme Note: It might be of interest for some to note that a gap of only six months separates the writing of my second and third quartets (1979) but a 33 year interval stands between the third and the present piece String Quartet No. 4.Which is in five movements and is about nothing but itself. The first movement 'Adagio - Presto alla breve - Adagio' is an overture of sorts lifting the lid as it were on the odd bit of what happens later on in the other movements.A portal into:The second movement 'Vivo scherzando' which is just that: a short (2 minutes only) fast and jocular piece leading up to the next movement: 'Adagio sognante' a slow and hushed dream-world paving the way for the pièce de resistance of the entire quartet: 'Presto alla breve' a ferociously fast tour de force for the four players who with that one under their belts can lean back a little (but only a little) and put the whole thing gently to bed in the fifth and final movement: a simple 'Adagio'. Off the record: my first string quartet (1972) has been withdrawn and is no more a fact that renders the numbering of the subsequent quartets a matter of personal conviction. Poul Ruders November 2012

Programme Note This short one-movement quartet is a kind of modernization of the 14th century French motets a cadeau to this weird and fantastic music whose abstract and almost deprecatory introvert expression appears unaccountably modern and incredibly ancient at the same time. MOTET is a sober cool treatise on rhythm and statics depicted in a Gothic crypt-like atmosphere. The almost completely non-vibrato movement is suggestive of boys’ choir monks’ processions and the piercing sound of musical glasses. An ancient world is reborn and becomes the world of today. Poul Ruders 1979

Piano Quartet by Poul Ruders (2015-16). Commissioned by the Bravo! Vail Music Festival Vail Colorado (2016) and Patricia Isenberg the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival Key Largo Florida (2017). Parts available WH32840A