String Quartet in G Min, Op. 8

Quand Smetana, en 1876, termine son Quatuor en mi mineur sous des couleurs tristes et sombres, il est déjà atteint par la surdité. Quel musicien ne connaît pas ce passage fatidique du 4e mouvement, où Smetana symbolise par une note ultra-aiguë au violon le début de sa maladie? Les mouvements précédents sont consacrés aux stations plus heureuses de sa vie - la préface de notre édition cite un passage détaillé d'une lettre consacré à ce sujet. Smetana, qui à l'époque avait reçu de son éditeur des honoraires ridicules pour son quatuor, ne pouvait pas prévoir que cette oeuvre compterait un jour au rang des quatuors à cordes les plus célèbres. / Quatuor A Cordes

Dedicated to Thurston Dart Michael Nyman?s professor at King?s College London much of String Quartet No. 1 borrows and is inspired by the works of seventeenth century composer John Bull whosecomplete keyboard works Dart gave Nyman as a birthday present. The other main source of inspiration was Schöneberg?s Second String Quartet from the early 20th century.In his introduction to the piece Nymandescribes his two background ideas when composing the work: first to make an almost ?orchestral? chamber music and second to exorcise the impressive and oppressive history of the String quartet by making his work a compendium ofquotations from the quartet repertoire. Commissioned by the Arditti Quartet and first performed by them in 1985 String Quartet No. 1 has a duration of 25:44 minutes.Michael Nyman is an Englishcomposer of minimalist music pianist librettist and musicologist known for numerous film and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to ?The Piano?. He has additionally written a number of operas six concerti four stringquartets and many other chamber works.

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

Haydn Quartets. Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. Haydn Quartets / Seiffert, Wolf-Dieter / Répertoire / 2 Violons, Alto, Violoncelle

Opp. 127 130-133 135-Beethoven's late String Quartets are universally regarded as supreme transcendent works - among the greatest and most intimate music in chamber literature. Composed in the last years of the master's life - between 1823 and 1827 - these quartets contain astonishing experiments in thematic development and musical form that laid the foundation for innovations in 20th Century string quartet writing especially in the important works of Bartok and Shostakovich.This volume reprinted from the definitive Breitkopf and Hartel edition includes:String Quartet No.12 In E Flat Op.127String Quartet No.13 In B Flat Op.130String Quartet No.14 In C Sharp MinorOp.131String Quartet No.15 In A Minor Op.132String Quartet No.16 In F Op.135 and theGrosse Fuge In B Flat Op.133This convenient affordable volume is the ideal edition for study in the classroom at home or in the concert hall.

John Luther Adams' Everything That Rises for String Quartet. Composers note: I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet and I understood how Imight be able to make the medium my own. The result was The Wind in High Places - a twenty-minute work composed entirely on natural harmonics and open strings. Over the next few years twomore quartets followed. The second quartet  untouched  is a further exploration of the aeolian sound world of the first. Then in Canticles of the Sky the musicians finally touch the fingerboards of theirinstruments. And now comes Everything That Rises. This fourth quartet is more expansive both in time and in space. It grows out of Sila: The Breath of the World - aperformance-length choral/orchestral work composed on a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds. Everything That Rises traverses this same territory but in a much more melodic way. Each musician isa soloist playing throughout. They surround the audience. Time floats. Over the course of an hour the lines spin out - always rising - in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiralupward... until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows sighing. Duration: 60 minutes