Peter Maxwell Davies: Quartet Movement: String Quartet: Miniature Score

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.14008409

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. This movement for string quartet was first performed by the Arditti Quartet in May 1983, as part of the 40th Anniversary Gala concert of the Society for the Promotion of New Music at the Barbican Hall, London. Score (miniature). Duration c. 5mins.

SKU: HL.14022647

ISBN 9781846098611. 5.5x7.5x0.101 inches.

This work was commissioned by the Naxos Recording Company, and is the fifth in a series of ten quartets. It was first performed on 20th October 2004 at the Wigmore Hall, London by the Maggini Quartet.