First String Quartet, Op. 7

String Quartet No.4 was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2012. Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Wigmore Hall For the ArdittiQuartet. Programme note: The basic idea for my Fourth String Quartet was very clear to me: It should be quiet and soft music or to put it in a german term: hoch im Himmel gesungen ... (High singing in heaven). Each of the four movements has a different scordatura/pitch. The first movement begins - like my work 'Schnee' - sky-high with an airy and soft melody by the first violin. The second movement is fast and movement and joy-like. It consists of two duets and a reverse style counterpoint. While the sections were progressively longer in the first movement they are getting shorter and shorter in the second. Dark, heavy and earthy is the third movement and its pizzicato recalls big black raindrops falling to the ground. It is the dark and grainy counterpart to the first movement whereas the fourth movement corresponds to the second. The fourth movement was planned as a dark and heavy counterpart but it turned out to be like babbling music of a child. My Fourth String Quartet has become in its way a serene and cool piece. So the Quartet has been finished luckiyly after twenty years - it was already in 1990 that I was commissioned by Wittener Tage fur Neue Musik to write the piece for Arditti Quartet. Hans Abrahamsen

Composed by Robert Schumann. Edited by Ernst Herttrich. For String Quartet (Study Score). Henle Study Scores. Softcover. 132 pages. G. Henle #HN9873. Published by G. Henle

String Quartet (Score)

SKU: HL.14023669

Composed by Michael Nyman. Music Sales America. 20th Century. Score. Composed 1993. 48 pages. Chester Music #CH60850. Published by Chester Music (HL.14023669).

ISBN 9780711977570. 9.0x12.0x0.155 inches.

There are two primary ideas behind this composition, the first being to create and almost orchestral chamber music, the idea for this coming from a performance of the Grosse Fuge performed by the Arditti Quartet. The second idea was to excercise the impressive and oppresive history of the string quartet by making the work a compendium of quotations from quartet repertoire. Influence from Schoenberg can be heard in chromatic, harmonic sequences and modal/diatonic varioations are also actively displayed within the piece. The quartet is written with amplification in mind and it is the composer's preference that it is performed in this way. String Quartet No.1 is dedicated to the memory of Thurston Dart. It was commissioned by the Arditti Quartet and first performed by them on 23 September 1985, Warsaw. Duration 26 minutes. Instrumental parts are available on sale.