Sixth String Quartet

SKU: HL.14008374

ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies' fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company, first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo, Norway, as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004, with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor, an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq. I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560, now in Vienna), which had been the inspiration for my sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination, but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of the work. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog, bind the devil with a cord, truss, wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks, guess whom I shall choose, courting, odds and evens. The single movement juxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture, taking liberties which would never be present in, for instance, Brunelleschi architectural drawings, so here, with a constant sequence of transformation processes, I have distorted the neat, precise implications of modal progression, expressed in the unison opening phrase (from F to B through A sharp/B flat), so that the ear is led, en route, into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that I was reading into, and behind the games, adult motives and implications, concerning aggression and war, with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.

SKU: HL.14008384

ISBN 9781847723970. 8.25x11.75x0.149 inches.

The complete String Quartet score for Maxwell Davies' Quartet No.6. This work was commissioned by the Naxos Recording Company, and is the sixth in a series of ten quartets. It was first performed on 26th April 2005 at the Purcell Room, London by the Maggini Quartet.

SKU: CF.O5012

ISBN 9780825874871. UPC: 798408074876. 9 X 12 inches. Key: C major. The Whispers of Heavenly Death section of the Leaves of Grass.

The singer needs the full score to perform this work.

SKU: PR.14440505S

UPC: 680160594603.

The most straightforward and shortest of any of my string quartets to date, the sixth employs only two thematic gestures which are used, perhaps obsessively, throughout: (a) brief melodic lines formed principally of sevenths, and (b) an ascending scale. The formal design is born out of the continual combining, interweaving and juxtaposition of these two elements, which collect themselves into two movements played without pause: the first predominantly slow and pensive, the second rhythmic and driving. Quartet No. 6 is approximately 16 minutes in duration. The score was commissioned by the Los Angeles-based Calder Quartet, four extremely talented young musicians with whom I performed at the Aspen, Colorado, Music Festival, and is dedicated to my wife, Elizabeth on the occasion of our fifty years together. The first movement is written in memory of my father-in-law Howard Deischer (1907 - 2005), who died during the course of composing. The work was completed in April of 2005 in Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida. -- Sydney Hodkinson.
The most straightforward and shortest of any of my string quartets to date, the sixth employs only two thematic gestures which are used, perhaps obsessively, throughout: (a) brief melodic lines formed principally of sevenths, and (b) an ascending scale.  The formal design is born out of the continual combining, interweaving and juxtaposition of these two elements, which collect themselves into two movements played without pause: the first predominantly slow and pensive, the second rhythmic and driving.Quartet No. 6 is approximately 16 minutes in duration.  The score was commissioned by the Los Angeles-based Calder Quartet, four extremely talented young musicians with whom I performed at the Aspen, Colorado, Music Festival, and is dedicated to my wife, Elizabeth on the occasion of our fifty years together.  The first movement is written in memory of my father-in-law Howard Deischer (1907 – 2005), who died during the course of composing.  The work was completed in April of 2005 in Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida.— Sydney Hodkinson.

SKU: HL.14008383

8.5x11.75x0.35 inches.

The set of parts for Maxwell Davies's Naxos Quartet Six for strings. This work was commissioned by the Naxos Recording Company, and is the sixth in a series of ten quartets. It was first performed on 26th April 2005 at the Purcell Room, London by the Maggini Quartet.