String Quartet No. 2 (1994)

Date of composition: 1994; Duration: 14’30; Commissioning body: The Smith Quartet; Premiere performance: 1994, Greenwich Festival, UK; Premiere performers: The Smith Quartet; Publisher: Eleanor Alberga

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Eleanor writes:

“The three string quartets were all written within an eight-year period between 1993 and 2001.

The second quartet, though following quickly on the heels of the first…is altogether more concise and compact. Whereas with the first it had been the extra-musical that had governed the conception of the whole piece, with this second quartet, it was what the listener will hear in the first two seconds that yielded all the raw material needed. This short motive is treated to all manner of variation - inversions, expansions and so on - and is present in some form or another throughout the 15 minutes of the entire work. I have embedded some elements of traditional forms such as scherzo and slow movement into a freely flowing single span that might allow this quartet to be described as being in a compressed sonata form.”

Instrumentation:

Str 4tet