'3rd Quartet' for string quartet, duration c.23 minutes.
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 13
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2015
- URL
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https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/49665/3rd-Quartet--Simon-Holt/
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The patterning of complex musical structures that weave together and inter-relate while at the same time referencing detailed non-musical narratives perhaps reaches a culmination in my third quartet. It is the focal point of my string-based cycle Terrain, in which each of its six individual movements corresponds to the works in the larger cycle – though in reverse order. Also, and building on my first two string quartets, I set out in the third quartet to develop music of extreme virtuosity, stretching playability to its limits with more than a lean towards the string writing of Xenakis, given the JACK Quartet’s connection to that repertoire. The JACK is a renowned quartet and I felt they should have a work worthy not just of their expertise, but one which stretched it further and showcased the exceptional exuberance of their musicianship. In early rehearsals it became clear I had gone too far, even for the JACK, and passages had to be rewritten to make them more playable. The fifth movement however, ‘the forsaken cry’, in which each instrument in the quartet plays entirely independently of the others tests technique and ensemble close to its breaking point. But virtuosity is mediated by narrative: the story of Wu Ping, (second movement) who stubbornly refuses to move from her house in Chonqqing, China, so the construction company building the shopping mall dig out the whole area, leaving her on top of a column of earth; and the imagery of Auden’s poem, ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’. These texts are an enrichment of the aural imagery creating allusion and ambiguity. Performed at Wigmore Hall in January 2015 and recorded for NMC. Played later that month at the Heidelberger Streichquartettfest, an important festival in the string quartet calendar. Published by Wise Music Classical, available on nKoda.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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