- Stigmi-Anadrasi ("Moment-Feedback") (2002)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for string quartet
ca. 4'45"
Click here to view the score and listen to a recording of the second movement.
- Janus Quartet (1983)
-
Ruth Lomon
for string quartet
ca. 18'30"
The Janus Quartet was composed during a stay at the MacDowell colony in Peterborough, N.H. I was there during the months of November and December in 1983. As I started to work on the quartet the snow began to fall – it was a very straight snowfall – not a trace of wind. The windows of my studio looked out on stands of firs and slender birches. The opening of this quartet tries to capture that serenity. The theme is shared between the two violins; the viola and cello are playing a D harmonic with the viola playing the note a quarter tone higher. You probably won't experience this as another tone but as a beat or pulsing of the note. This section is titled ''when the snow is falling." There follows a lively melodic and rhythmic development which closes at midpoint in the piece with a section reflecting the quarter-tone pedal point of the opening and leading into a recapitulation of what I'll call the ''snow'' theme, this time with the theme dispersed through the four instruments. This recapitulation leads into the second section of the quartet titled ''Remembrance of things passed." You may hear an echo of Schumann, a short phrase from Barber's Adagio for Strings, perhaps too short to pick it out but these echoes set the mood of this section. A quote from Beethoven's 15th quartet heightens the drama and leads into a climax coming to rest on a calm, cantabile close. The cellist closes with a theme which has been used as an accompaniement to the little fragments of Schumann and Barber. It is a quote from a setting of Blake's poem INJUNCTION which I composed in 1962.
The Angel that presided o'er my birth said
"little creature born of joy and mirth
Go love without the help of anything on earth".
Composed for the Janus String Quartet during a residency at the MacDowell Colony.
Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.
- Flames Rising and Falling to the Sea (1988)
-
Anna Rubin
for string quartet
Flames Rising and Falling to the Sea is a one-movement work emphasizing melismatic and florid writing in a hereophonic texture. The note D perfumes the piece anchoring the atonal language of the piece.
- Yallivari (1975, rev. 2017)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for string quartet
ca. 8'15"
"Yalli" is an ancient Azerbaijani-Turkish collective dance that is a demonstration of the unit, solidarity, and friendship. Participants can be both women and/or men. Keeping each other by the hands and performing rhythmically coordinated step elements, dancers follow a leader who makes circle-like movements. Yalli is an expression of love to Nature and indefinite Life. "Yallivari" means yalli-like rhythmical beats.
- String Quartet III, Tetraksis (1995)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for string quartet
ca. 25'00"
String Quartet #3 was named Tetraxis and dedicated to the tragic history of Azerbaijan. Today the smock-faced devil is continuing to hover over the Earth. Tetraxis was premiered in Baku in 2004 and then premiered and recorded in Kohl, Germany in 2004 by the Minguet quartet.
Ulrich Istform, violin I
Annette Reisinger, violin II
Irene Schwalb, viola
Matthias Diener, violoncello
Audio recording made by Gideon Boss at the Deutschland Radio.
Click here to listen to the recording.
- String Quartet I (1974, rev. 2017)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for string quartet
ca. 15'00"
- String Quartet II (1982)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for string quartet
ca. 20'39"
Audio was recorded in 2004 by Deutschlandradio, Kohln by the Minguet Quartet, Germany.
Ulrich Isfort, Violin I
Annette Reisinger, Violin II
Irene Schwalb, Viola
Matthias Diener, Violoncello
Audio engeener: Gideon Boss
Click here to listen to the recording.
- Marseaya (1993)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for flute, oboe, clarinet in Bb, bassoon, string quartet, piano, and chorus
ca. 15'35"
- Perfect Equilibrium (2016)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for piano quintet
ca. 14'05"
- Pastorale (1974, rev. 2016)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for string quartet
ca. 4'30"
Pastorale is the reminiscence of my journey to a small mountain village. Far from city noises I spent wonderful times there among strangely-shaped green stone blocks, wildflowers, and making musical sounds waterfalls. Little houses were built close to the gulch where a light morning breeze created songs, each time new and unrepeatable. Listening to all-embracing breath of nature, smelling a perfume of herbs and fresh air, looking to the sourrounded horizon I was speechless and truly fascinated. Pastorale is my musical impression of my feelings.
- Dervish (1992)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for tenor, bass, and string quartet
ca. 20'39"
Dervish is the representation of the global understanding of how things work and interact in the universe: All is connected to everything and everything is connected to all.
Dervish was recorded at my portrait concert by Koln Deutschlandradio in 2004 by the Minguet Quartet, with vocalists:
Ulrich Isfort, violin I
Annette Reisinger, violin II
Irene Schwalb, viola
Matthias Diener, violoncello
Vocalists:
Kyu-Cheul Lee, tenor
David Hieronimi, bass
Click here to listen to the recording.
- Leaning Into and Away (1994)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, oboe, clarinet in Bb, percussion, piano, and string quartet
ca. 12'51"
Commissioned by the Cuicani Orchestra Project, with support from the US/Mexico Fund for Culture
Dedicated to the memory of Manuel Enriquez
I use the title Leaning Into and Away because the piece grew out of many thoughts about and experiences dancing and making music for dancers. I found myself focussing particularly on the energies of running on the ground and leaping into space, and the flow of energy involved in any physical moves from balance to suspension. I also wanted to work with the idea of excavating sounds from the bone and sinew of piano, wind, string, and percussion instruments – as dancers draw energy from deep inside their bodies.
Click here to view the performance notes.
Click here to hear a recording by the Prism Players on Spotify.
- Lemniscates (1988)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for string quartet
ca. 18'00"
"Lemniscates was composed for the Kronos String Quartet to be premiered at the New Music America, Miami, during the December 1988 Festival. The piece was developed, in large part, to work in the barely audible range. It is about excavating "sound around the sound," a sonic resource of stringed instruments rarely used in an acoustical setting.
The title Lemniscates derives from the Latin word "Lemniscus," meaning "with hanging ribbons." In mathematics, the word refers to the figure-of-eight shape, and is defined as follows: "the locus of the foot of the perpendicular from the center of a conic on its axis." The dance theorist, Rudolph von Laban, uses the word to describe figure-of-eight energy shapes drawn by the body in space. I use the word in all of the above contexts - to describe "ribbons of sound," to illustrate techiniques of bowing, and to provide a metaphor for the spacial motion of the sound ribbons, and the choreographed sonic scultpure created by the Kronos Quartet."
Click here to read a letter from Hovda to David Harrington, containing additional performance notes.
- Movement for String Quartet (1963)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for string quartet
- Into the Brightening Air (1999)
-
Lois V Vierk
for string quartet
ca. 24'13"
Into the Brightening Air dates originally dates from 1994, but was revised in 1999. It was conceived as a dance piece for Karen Bamonte Danceworks W (despite its considerable abstraction, the rhythmic thrust and harmonic openness of Vierk's music make it especially successful for dance, rather like Stravinsky's). This work shows the most recent development in her music, embodied in the music's flow. The piece creates the by-now expected accumulation of energy in its opening minutes, but then, even as it grows in density, it also begins to slow down and open up, and we find ourselves in a new landscape, more spacious and generous than we had known before. While not following a traditional format, the music does seem to exist in some sort of multi-movement form, played without pause. Perhaps this trajectory is derived from the Yeats poem "The Song of the Wandering Aengus", which inspired the title: in the poem the writer catches a "silver trout" which metamorphoses into a "glimmering girl" and "faded through the brightening air", leaving him with a lifelong sense of loss and yearning.
--Robert Carl
Recording is by:
Eva Gruesser, violin
Patricia Davis, violin
Lois Martin, viola
Bruce Wang, cello
from CD:
Tzadik 7056 "Lois V Vierk: River Beneath the River"
Click here to view the CD on Tzadik.
Click here to view the score and listen to the music.
Click here to download all performance materials.
- River Beneath the River (1993)
-
Lois V Vierk
for string quartet
ca. 14'11"
Currents of sound made up of string phrases and textures of tremolos, glissandos, sustained sounds, and highly articulated and accented passages flow through this piece. The currents alternately co-exist, separate, and coalesce, in their gradual transformation from a gentle beginning to a dynamic conclusion.
At the beginning of the work, the first violin and cello act together to form one "sound scape". This shape interacts with the sound shape of the second violin and viola. Throughout the piece two or more instruments always act together to form one shape, one sound. the music unfolds slowly. The constant transforming and developing of the sound shapes and relationships employ principles which I call "exponential structure". This has to do with rates of change of musical materials, which in this work are constantly increasing by an exponential factor.
The term "river beneath the river" comes from the Spanish expression "rio abajo rio", which refers to the innermost soul, the depest expression of a human.
This work was commissioned by the Barbican Center of London for the Kronos Quartet.
Recording is by:
Eva Gruesser, violin
Patricia Davis, violin
Lois Martin, viola
Bruce Wang, cello
from CD:
Tzadik 7056 "Lois V Vierk: River Beneath the River"
Click here to view the CD on Tzadik.
Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.
Click here to download all performance materials.