Parts for String Quartet No.3 'Angel's Music' by Bent Sørensen (1988) Premiered by the Arditti String Quartet at the Danish Radio Concert Hall 16 November 1988. Score available: KP00250The composer writes:'Even when I was writing 'Adieu' I knew that I wished to write 'Angel’s Music'. The title existed in an incomplete form in my mind and gradually more and more ideas and a few outlines became clear. The actual work on 'Angel’s Music' was started in Rome where I spent the autumn of 1987 staying at 'The Danish Academy'. Whether this stay has influenced the quartet or not is impossible to say. however it is true to say that inthe Roman churches I visited I saw countless angels playing in the top of frescoes and altars. Without these angels together with the many crackled-gold paintings in this city and my general fascination with the Italian renaissance painter Fra Angelico (in fact there are only a few paintings by him in Rome but even his name..!) I am not sure my quartet would have been what it is. Anyway I do feel that there is a bit of Italy in the piece. The angels apart there are in the short rhythmic agitating part of the quartet reminiscences of the Italian medieval Trotto dance and in the most expressive part of the piece there are flashes of Puccini-like music. From the very beginning of my work on the quartet the distant extremely muted sound in the high register which opens the piece was on my mind. A sound satiated with a dense heterophonic and polyphonic texture of elegiac melody and vibrating trills. I imagined that 'little songs' (maybe angel songs) could be created in this density these songs constantly echoing themselves. Gradually as this sound got a more and more concrete musical and instrumental form I felt that not only should the 'little songs' be created played and die out in an echo but also that the general pattern of the quartet should give the feeling of music which from the distance is getting closer and closer

Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) was an Italian composer musicologist and editor. He drew on his extensive research into Italian musical history when he wrote his first String Quartet Rispetti EStrambotti in 1920. It pays tribute to the two forms of early Italian poetry in the title but also depicts wider themes from Renaissance music from free polyphony to operatic recitatives. However the structure of thepiece is distinctly modern deliberately attempting to break with the all-pervading Sonata form and the wider Romantic Movement in general. The result is a memorable mesmerising construction that is modern and dramatic butwith a fusion of undeniably medieval flavours.

Study score to Bent Sørensen's Adieu for String Quartet (1986).The slow choral-like music which initiates 'Adieu' was the result of an image or almost a dream that I had. Without being able to explain why I imagined a procession of people maybe medieval monks wearing large gray mantles with Ku-Klux-Klan-like white cowls on their heads something like a funeral procession. The title Adieu is partly a comment on this funeral procession but also used because the piece is split up by three slow-ascending glissandi a kind of 'farewell glissandi' which removes the intervening music. The first absorbing glissando is soft and removes both the slow funeral choral andthe agitating figures in the first half of the piece. The second glissando is given only to the cello and crawls out from the elegiac melodies in the middle part. The third and 'final' glissando is intense and agitating and prepares the way for the end of the piece. This end primarily deals with the relationship fast - slow. This relationship is turned topsy turvy: the music gets faster and faster until it is so fast that it suddenly becomes slow so slow in fact that it is very quickly able to become extremely fast again.Bent Sørensen

Christmas round the world brings together carols from five countries, in settings which explore the vivid national characteristics of each country through the ages. Ideal for both string orchestra and quartet use, the arrangements exploit all the techniques and colours of the school or amateur ensemble. There is plenty of melodic interest for the inner parts and cello, while jazz, Latin-American and medieval music provide the inspiration for the up-beat accompaniments. The beginners' line (suitable for violin, viola and cello) allows everyone to join in the fun of festive music making at Christmas. / Ensemble Music / Recueil / Violon, Violoncelle, Alto et Contrebasse

Score available: KP30120 The composer writes:The slow choral-like music which initiates 'Adieu' was the result of an image or almost a dream that I had. Without being able to explain why I imagined a procession of people maybe medieval munks wearing large gray mantles with Ku-Klux-Klan-like white cowls on their heads something like a funeral procession. The title Adieu is partly a comment on this funeral procession but also used because the piece is split up by three slow-ascending glissandi a kind of 'farewell glissandi' which removes the intervening music. The first absorbing glissando is soft and removes both the slow funeral choral and the agitating figures inthe first half of the piece. The second glissando is given only to the cello and crawls out from the elegiac melodies in the middle part. The third and 'final' glissando is intense and agitating and prepares the way for the end of the piece. This end primarily deals with the relationship fast - slow. This relationship is turned topsy turvy: the music gets faster and faster until it is so fast that it suddenly becomes slow so slow in fact that it is very quickly able to become extremely fast again.

The full score for String Quartet No.3 'Angel's Music' by Bent Sørensen (1988) Premiered by the Arditti String Quartet at the Danish Radio Concert Hall 16 November 1988. Parts available: KP00249The composer writes:'Even when I was writing 'Adieu' I knew that I wished to write 'Angel’s Music'. The title existed in an incomplete form in my mind and gradually more and more ideas and a few outlines became clear. The actual work on 'Angel’s Music' was started in Rome where I spent the autumn of 1987 staying at 'The Danish Academy'. Whether this stay has influenced the quartet or not is impossible to say. however it is true tosay that in the Roman churches I visited I saw countless angels playing in the top of frescoes and altars. Without these angels together with the many crackled-gold paintings in this city and my general fascination with the Italian renaissance painter Fra Angelico (in fact there are only a few paintings by him in Rome but even his name..!) I am not sure my quartet would have been what it is. Anyway I do feel that there is a bit of Italy in the piece. The angels apart there are in the short rhythmic agitating part of the quartet reminiscences of the Italian medieval Trotto dance and in the most expressive part of the piece there are flashes of Puccini-like music. From the very beginning of my work on the quartet the distant extremely muted sound in the high register which opens the piece was on my mind. A sound satiated with a dense heterophonic and polyphonic texture of elegiac melody and vibrating trills. I imagined that 'little songs' (maybe angel songs) could be created in this density these songs constantly echoing themselves. Gradually as this sound got a more and more concrete musical and instrumental form I felt that not only should the 'little songs' be created played and die out in an echo but also that the general pattern of the quartet should give the feeling of music which from the distance is getting closer and

This is - so far - the earliest composition by Davies to be available for performance and mighty interesting it is. Written while he was still a young student it provides a candid glimpse of the thing that concerned him: how music could be both forward-moving in the classical Western sense (this is after all a piece for a wholly conventional medium) and repetitive in the manner of the Indian and medieval music in which he was interested. What results is a singular machine geared to an intermittent ostinato in the first violin.Duration c. 5mins.Set of parts. This is a special item which is made to order. Please e-mail our Mail Order Department for furtherinformation.

Par CAPODAGLIO LEONELLO. / Niveau : 1er Cycle / Répertoire / Ensemble à Vent