Three string quartets

Juan Crisostomo Arriaga a distinguished Spanish composer (1806-26) this is one of the three String Quartets that he composed. Instrumentation: Violin I II Viola and Violincello. This work was composed 1822.

Allerheiligentag Iii. Par LINJAMA JYRKI. Jyrki Linjama's second string quartet (2018) is subtitled Allerheiligentag III. The material for the Allerheiligentag cycle is a Finnish folk chorale for All Saints' Day (no. 146 in the Finnish Hymn Book). The first work in the cycle is a string trio (2007), the second a piece for orchestra (2009), and the fourth and fifth are solo works for viola da gamba and violin.The composer tells: “The choice of topic and material for the string trio was originally prompted by the venue at which it was to be premiered: the old church on the island of Seili (Själö). The bleak history of the island's leper and mental hospital evoked images of suffering and death. I got so attached to the harsh and beautiful melody that it began to generate a whole cycle.” The string quartet is in three movements (slow-quick-slow) tensed in different ways by contrasts. The first movement has both swinging softness and cutting sharpness, the Scherzo the wildness of a dance of death and lyricism, and the finale the irrevocability of a funeral march and tender melodiousness./ Répertoire / String Quartet

String Quartet No.3 'Three Miniatures' was composed by Per Nørgård in 1959. Manuscript copy. Programme Note: The spectrum of sound the gesticulation in short the very nature of the strings has always had a central place in my output demonstrated by the numbers of string quartets concertos with string soloist chamber and solo works. The interest dates back to my school years when I was fortunate to be able to compose for a cello-playing schoolmate and to accompany him on the piano. I discovered then the innumerable nuances of sound and playing varieties offered by just one bow four strings and fivefingers... The Three Miniatures for string quartet has a consequent experimental structure that dictates every note in the three extremely short movements. Each member of the quartet thus plays his own little melody a certain (but different) number of times so that the brand new soundscopes constantly appear in spite of the unchanging parts due to their different length. Per Nørgård

This String Quintet (with two Violas or three Violins) was composed in 1799. It is tuneful and straightforward and suitable for players who are not yet at the standard required to play the Mozart Dvorak or Brahms quintets with two Violas. This edition has the advantage of having a third Violin part included if two Viola players are not available. Johann Michael Haydn was the younger brother of his much more famous older brother Franz Joseph commonly regarded as the 'father' of the classical String Quartet format.

Chaconne. Par LERDAHL FRED. Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music. My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach’s D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern. My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

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