Make the silence talk'La Muette knew how to make the silence talk like no one', writes Djavann in his book (La Muette, © Flammarion 2008). Those words deeply touched me for they express one of the most beautiful metaphors in music. Through the lines of discourse, beyond words, I was listening to the silence of 'La Muette'. A rare and intense listening which joins the same internal listening I use when I'm writing my score. I was listening to La Muette, I decided to write a new piece to make the silent voice of La Muette told by Chahdortt Djavann sound through music. Choosing the extracts The text put in music is composed of short extracts from Djavann's story. I focused on this woman's portrait, who conquers her freedom through silence in which she forms a strong love relationship with her niece Fatemeh on the one hand, and the Uncle on the other hand. 'She had made her silence become her art of living, her freedom' writes Djavann. The extremely dramatic tension, the flow of the singing in Persian language, and the oppression in relation to the Iranian context are trying to underline the independent beauty of that woman who resists and exists without a voice. Story A young 15 years old Iranian girl named Fatemeh is in jail. Waiting for her death sentence, she writes the story of her aunt on a small notebook, 'so that someone remembers La Muette and myself'. The young teenager was raised by her aunt who becomes mute because she decided to stop talking on a dark day of her own childhood when she was interrogated, never to tell THE truth. An aunt whose silence makes even more fascinating, haughty, with an insolent look, cigarette at her lips, bare-footed and without any scarf on her head. 'La Muette' had made her silence become her art of living, her freedom. Around her, women start to talk, even considering her mad, for only a mad person could act this way. Fatemeh loves her mute aunt unconditionally, that is how she wants to become a woman, by being like her, fascinated by her silence and her excesses. La Muette embodies a figure of Freedom and makes us remember that in some countries, the woman who won't be submissive risks capital punishment. She will be hung. Following this beautiful text by Chahdortt Djavann, 'La Muette', a powerful text, stiff, tensed, without any lyricism nor compromises, which takes place in Iran under the Mollahs' regime. Persian: Phonological material / Compositional material Djavann's story is written in French. I asked Baharé Khadjé-Nouri to translate the text into Persian, and worked with her on pronunciation, accentuation, metric and the structure of the language, and I thank her again for that. I spent a long time having some people reading me the text in Persian and through listening I immersed myself in that sound universe. From this linguistic material, the beginning of the piece starts with the constitution of a tank of sound objects which will constitute parts of the compositional material. To compose the phonological tank, I worked on writing the pronunciation that lies at the origin of every possible vocal composition, writing the tone as well as the 'percussive - resounding' aspects of phonemes, multiple uses of fricative consonants or sibilants. Finally I used the vocal treatment of the phoneme through modes of play in relation to sprechsang: sing -inspire, or -expire, -blow, -chanting, -whispering, -spitting, -speaking. But a purely phonetic analysis of the vocal structures composing the sung part would reduce the word to its mere phonetic entity. The phonological material then constituted a compositional material by giving to the sung word its semantic entity. Form of the piece To strip the drama off every narrative element, at least of the discursive and linear character of the story, I first re-organized parts of the text extracted from the whole book in an order fitting the form I wanted to give to the piece (except for the beginning and ending which are kept in their linear forms). I imagined Fatemeh in jail, whose memories bounced between the four walls of her cell: recurring musical material, re-injected in an obsessive way, disjointed and contrasted, continuously modified each time, bouncing from one sequence to the next in another state. The piece is divided into 5 sequences, between each of them is an instrumental interlude with a voice-off, the voice of the present in the cell that contrasts with the singing voice of the sequence, evocation of memories of La Muette (sequence 1: preamble, sequence 2: portrait of La Muette, sequence 3: La Muette and Fatemeh, sequence 4: La Muette and the Uncle, sequence 5: epilogue). Electroacoustic setupFor this piece, I wrote the electroacoustic parts myself at the same time I was writing the instrumental parts. The electroacoustic setup is here considered as a whole instrument, an instrument added to the 12 others electroacoustic instruments and to Donatienne's voice. The electroacoustic sounds are divided into three types: - Samples from the singer's voice and instruments of the TM+ ensemble transformed - The narrator's voice Baharé Khadjé-Nouri in Persian, original version or transformed - Extra-musical sounds As for the synchronization between the acoustic and the electroacoustic scores, we will use for the first time an innovative application developed by Frédéric Bevilacqua and Bruno Zamborlin, not to follow the moves as we did it in StreicherKreis (my string quartet created in November 2008), but to follow the voice and orchestra. Thus, we will be using an 'audio-following', which constituted a first. This setup of recognition and following will allow the synchronization between instrumental and electroacoustic scores in a musical and precise way. Concerning the interactivity between performers and device, it will all be in real-time. Characteristics of the musicians' sound will 'interpret' what comes out of the speakers. The musicians will define the settings of the sound transformations, in terms of space, transposition, tone or length. This new piece expresses a message through the choice of subject that goes beyond strictly music. For me, it is important that both the composer and writer can invest their work into problematics which they're confronted to because they are immediate witnesses. / Soprano Et Percussions

Lubo? Fi?er (1935?1999) was one of the most distinctive figures of Czech music in the 20th century and composed the Variations on an Unknown Theme in 1976. The ?unknown theme? was a prankish eight-bar theme from Fi?er?s student days. In the elation following the home-team win over Canada on 15 March 1959, he made a bet with his colleague Kalach to compose a concert piece for violin and orchestra with the working title ?Canada-Rondo?. The whimsical contest was abandoned, but Fi?er did not forget the theme and he later created variations on it for his new composition for the Talich Quartet. The Variations on an Unknown Theme have now been published for the first time ever. This edition is based on the autograph of the score which is housed in the Czech Museum of Music in Prague.

Par NEWMAN MICHAEL. Hailed by The New York Times as Fresh, Hot and Headed for Fame, The Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo explores the farthest reaches of the ensemble literature, performing and recording the premieres of many new works. As the ensemble-in-residence at New York's Mannes College of Music, the duos concert tours have taken them to forty-nine states as well as to Asia, Europe, South America, Canada, and the Caribbean. Newman and Oltman have collaborated with such diverse artists as mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade and folk singer Sally Rogers, violinist Arnold Steinhardt and fiddler Jay Ungar, Celtic artist Seamus Egan, and the Lark and TurtleIsland String Quartets. The duo's ten critical praised recordings for MusicMasters/BMG and Sheffield Lab Audiophile reveal the extraordinary stylistic and cultural breadth of their repertoire. For this Artist series video Newman and Oltman perform eight Albeniz masterpieces: the complete original Suite espanola (Grandad, Sevilla Cuba,Cataluna), Tango, Rumores de la Caleta (Malaguena), Prelude (Asturias/Leyenda) from Cantos de Espana and the hauntily beautiful Asturie. The music for all of the pieces preformed here is available from Mel Bay Publications as well as with additional selections on the Music Masters BMG CD: Cantos de Espana/Songs of Spain. / Classic - Concert/Documentary / Accessoire / Guitare Classique

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

The Children's and Female Choruses were composed in a single burst of creative activity at the zenith of Bartók's career, in the summer of 1935, between such masterpieces as the String Quartet #5 and the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. These short choral pieces are based on folk texts that Bartók further polished and stylized. The music, however, is wholly the composer's own, although it frequently includes motifs, rhythmic formulas and line structures reminiscent of Hungarian folk songs. Both editions contain nine of the two-part pieces of the set, transcribed idiomatically but faithfully for descant and treble recorders, respectively. / 2 Flûtes A Bec Soprano

Note by the composer:'Triple Quartet is for string quartet and two pre-recorded quartets, or three live string quartets with no pre-recording. The piece is in three movements, fast-slow-fast, and is organized harmonically on four dominant chords in minor keys a minor third apart: E minor, G minor, Bb minor, C# minor and then returning to E minor to form a cycle.The first movement goes through this harmonic cycle twice with a section about one minute long on each of the four dominat chords. The result is a kind of variation form. Rhythmically the first movement has the second and third quartet playing interlocking chords while the first quartet plays longer melodies in canon between the first violin and viola against the second violin and cello. The slow movement is more completely contrapuntal with a long slow melody in canon eventually in all 12 voices. It stays in E minor throughout. The third movement resumes the original fast tempo, maintains the harmonic chord cycle but modulates back and forth between keys more rapidly. The final section of the movement is in the initial key of E minor and there the piece finally cadences.? Steve Reich, 1999 / Orchestre A Cordes

George Nicholson's Salut for String Quartet. The death of Peter Cropper in May 2015 was an immeasurable blow to the musical community especially to those of us who knew him not only as a wonderful wise musician but also as a warm colleague and friend. His unceasing devotion to the cause of music and to the promotion of excellent standards in performance was in my experience beyond compare. The finest tribute we can pay him is to continue to make music to the best of our ability and to go on reaching out to continue to explore and learn. I always felt that I would need to commemorate Peter in a piece for StringQuartet the medium he was most obviously associated with and in Salut it is understandably the first Violin part that has pride of place. The piece develops contrasting textures and registers and above all it is concerned with the influence of the extremely high Violin writing at the beginning on the rest of the ensemble. - George Nicholson Salut was first performed by the Ligeti Quartet Firth Hall University of Sheffield 17 May 2016.

Par PUSCOIU COSTEL. Well-known classical works for recorder students at all levels of ability, adapted and arranged especially for the recorder. The works are drawn from all periods, including Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern. The author has carefully placed the melodies in the best keys for easy recorder. / Niveau : Intermédiaire / Classic - Solos / Recueil / Flûte à Bec Soprano