String Quartet No.3 (2001)

Date of composition: 2001; Duration: 23’00; Commissioning body: Maggini String Quartet; Premiere performance: 18 February 2001, Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal, Bath, UK; Premiere performers: Maggini String 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.

Whilst they were created in quite different ways, the first two quartets are more stylistically related… The third quartet however, is a rather different animal – more reflective and inward looking.

It has four movements; the first movement mostly being centred around the note ‘D’. D is the ‘source’ from which all the notes of the piece emerge… In the Scherzo, twelve-tone series or fractions of series have their fullest use, especially in the middle section where each voice with its own series plays in counterpoint with the other voices. In the slow movement the tonal ideas from movement one start reappearing, and in the central psalm-like passage the twelve tones of each voice are treated in their most consonant and melodic form. The final movement becomes the development of all that went before, with reminiscences of other movements surfacing fleetingly. But though this movement has a wider perspective than its companions, the germ of the initial idea is still present; the D of the first movement containing the embryo of the bubbling underwater spring, growing and transforming through rapids and pools on its way to the final broad expanse of the sea.”

Instrumentation:

Str 4tet