SKU: A3.9781860969294
ISBN 9781860969294. 9 x 12 inches.
Spectrum for String Quartet is a collection of specially commissioned pieces. Three composers of widely different backgrounds and experience have written works of about eight minutes duration for players of ABRSM Grade 8 Standard.
SKU: BA.BA11056
ISBN 9790006502387. 34.5 x 27.3 cm inches.
In his seventh string quartet, the well-known Swiss composer Rudolf Kelterborn has achieved something special in terms of form: the title and subtitle already suggest that this quartet plays with a distinctively fragmented inner structure. It is highly appealing how the succession of short individual fragments becomes a cohesive one-movement whole.Both performers and audience encounter a skilful dramaturgy enabling them to experience the diverse spectrum of expression which this genre, steeped in tradition, opens up.
SKU: BT.ESZ-00666600
SKU: HL.14026541
ISBN 9788759874226. 9.5x14.25x0.058 inches. Danish.
String Quartet No.1 - 'Quartetto Breve' (1952) by Per Norgard. 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 five fingers.. My first string quartet - Quartetto Breve - has a firm root in the Nordictradition and is strongly inspired by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) and my teacher Vagn Holmboe (1909-96). Per Norgard (1998) .
SKU: BR.KM-2300
An exiting combination for Strings: The Groove String ConneXion und The Groove Cello ConneXion!
ISBN 9790004503058. 9 x 12 inches.
The Groove String ConneXion and The Groove Cello ConneXion: Breitkopf Pedagogy with popular music for strings.In addition to using it for cello ensemble, string quartet, string trio or string orchestra, the two books can even be combined, giving groups with an uncommon scoring the possibility of ensemble playing. Alternative parts are available on the CD-ROM. Detailed explanations on the pieces and on the used playing techniques together with PDF, audio and video files make this material a method for string instruments that covers a broad spectrum of popular music.Complementary videos showing playing techniques can be found on YouTube.For further audio and video examples see The Groove Cello ConneXion.Discover more rhythm and groove in teaching strings in Groovy Strings.The writing reflects experience and insights gained through years of actively playing and teaching many levels and ages of string players. It has been wonderful for me to hear Gunther playing this material with his students in Cologne. These pieces are exciting to play in real life and in real time. I cannot recommend these books highly enough!(Sera Smolen, Newsletter of the New Directions Cello Association).
SKU: HL.49033265
ISBN 9790001136778.
With the title of this composition, Fever Fantasy, Jorg Widmann refers to its musical air: 'I often feel Robert Schumann's melodic shape to be like the amplitude of a temperature curve: nervous, flickering, feverish, an infinite number of small and large wave crests and troughs within the principal line.'The composer approaches this sound phenomenon with a setting for acoustic instruments. Nevertheless, he succeeds in conjuring up very unusual sound spectrums. Over long sections, the notation of this score mirrors the musical progressions, containing no concrete pitches but detailed performance instructions instead. Slowly, individual tones emergefrom ascending pizzicato lines, colourless sound surfaces, sounds of harmonics roughened by tremolos, and virtuoso clarinet scales, tones that do not reveal their origin until the work ends: C - F - E - D sharp, the beginning of Schumann's first violin sonata.
SKU: HL.49018099
ISBN 9790001158428. UPC: 884088567347. 8.25x11.75x0.457 inches. Latin - German.
On letting go(Concerning the selection of the texts) In the selection of the texts, I have allowed myself to be motivated and inspired by the concept of 'letting go'. This appears to me to be one of the essential aspects of dying, but also of life itself. We humans cling far too strongly to successful achievements, whether they have to do with material or ideal values, or relationships of all kinds. We cannot and do not want to let go, almost as if our life depended on it. As we will have to practise the art of letting go at the latest during our hour of death, perhaps we could already make a start on this while we are still alive. Tagore describes this farewell with very simple but strikingly vivid imagery: 'I will return the key of my door'. I have set this text for tenor solo. Here I imagine, and have correspondingly noted in a certain passage of the score, that the protagonist finds himself as though 'in an ocean' of voices in which he is however not drowning, but immersing himself in complete relaxation. The phenomenon of letting go is described even more simply and tersely in Psalm 90, verse 12: 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom'. This cannot be expressed more plainly.I have begun the requiem with a solo boy's voice singing the beginning of this psalm on a single note, the note A. This in effect says it all. The work comes full circle at the culmination with a repeat of the psalm which subsequently leads into a resplendent 'lux aeterna'. The intermediate texts of the Requiem which highlight the phenomenon of letting go in the widest spectrum of colours originate on the one hand from the Latin liturgy of the Messa da Requiem (In Paradisum, Libera me, Requiem aeternam, Mors stupebit) and on the other hand from poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore and Rainer Maria Rilke.All texts have a distinctive positive element in common and view death as being an organic process within the great system of the universe, for example when Hermann Hesse writes: 'Entreiss dich, Seele, nun der Zeit, entreiss dich deinen Sorgen und mache dich zum Flug bereit in den ersehnten Morgen' ['Tear yourself way , o soul, from time, tear yourself away from your sorrows and prepare yourself to fly away into the long-awaited morning'] and later: 'Und die Seele unbewacht will in freien Flugen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht tief und tausendfach zu leben' ['And the unfettered soul strives to soar in free flight to live in the magic sphere of the night, deep and thousandfold']. Or Joseph von Eichendorff whose text evokes a distant song in his lines: 'Und meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flugel aus. Flog durch die stillen Lande, als floge sie nach Haus' ['And my soul spread its wings wide. Flew through the still country as if homeward bound.']Here a strong romantically tinged occidental resonance can be detected which is however also accompanied by a universal spirit going far beyond all cultures and religions. In the beginning was the sound Long before any sort of word or meaningful phrase was uttered by vocal chords, sounds, vibrations and tones already existed. This brings us back to the music. Both during my years of study and at subsequent periods, I had been an active participant in the world of contemporary music, both as percussionist and also as conductor and composer. My early scores had a somewhat adventurous appearance, filled with an abundance of small black dots: no rhythm could be too complicated, no register too extreme and no harmony too dissonant. I devoted myself intensely to the handling of different parameters which in serial music coexist in total equality: I also studied aleatory principles and so-called minimal music.I subsequently emigrated and took up residence in Spain from where I embarked on numerous travels over the years to India, Africa and South America. I spent repeated periods during this time as a resident in non-European countries. This meant that the currents of contemporary music swept past me vaguely and at a great distance. What I instead absorbed during this period were other completely new cultures in which I attempted to immerse myself as intensively as possible.I learned foreign languages and came into contact with musicians of all classes and styles who had a different cultural heritage than my own: I was intoxicated with the diversity of artistic potential.Nevertheless, the further I distanced myself from my own Western musical heritage, the more this returned insistently in my consciousness.The scene can be imagined of sitting somewhere in the middle of the Brazilian jungle surrounded by the wailing of Indians and out of the blue being provided with the opportunity to hear Beethoven's late string quartets: this can be a heart-wrenching experience, akin to an identity crisis. This type of experience can also be described as cathartic. Whatever the circumstances, my 'renewed' occupation with the 'old' country would not permit me to return to the point at which I as an audacious young student had maltreated the musical parameters of so-called contemporary music. A completely different approach would be necessary: an extremely careful approach, inching my way gradually back into the Western world: an approach which would welcome tradition back into the fold, attempt to unfurl the petals and gently infuse this tradition with a breath of contemporary life.Although I am aware that I will not unleash a revolution or scandal with this approach, I am nevertheless confident as, with the musical vocabulary of this Requiem, I am travelling in an orbit in which no ballast or complex structures will be transported or intimated: on the contrary, I have attempted to form the message of the texts in music with the naivety of a 'homecomer'. Harald WeissColonia de San PedroMarch 2009.
