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Sheet Music: ScoreString quartet No. 1 : Elegies and dances / Paul Stanhope.by Paul Stanhope (2008)
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My String Quartet no.1 contemplates mortality, the fragile and
precious beauty of new life and its transforming qualities. It
was commissioned for Musica Viva Australia by Julia Hickman
Potter, in honour of Peter Hickman's sixtieth birthday.
The opening Sonata is built on a relatively large scale and, like
traditional 'sonata form', uses elements of conflicting thematic
rhetoric. This arch-shaped movement begins with an introduction
of sighing, brooding elegiac figures. An argumentative first
violin solo is pitted against more understated music in the
response of the other parts. The first violin acts as an agent
provocateur, driving the music headlong into a series of
interlinked fast-tempo episodes. Thematic elements introduced
earlier are elaborated throughout the course of the movement. As
the movement progresses, various instrumental strands threaten to
take their own course and at the climax, this accord breaks down:
each instrument becomes more assertive with machinelike
repetitive figures pitted in different time groupings against
each other. These argumentative elements gradually and
reluctantly release echoes of the opening elegies in a series of
slowly descending harmonic spirals and a more resigned statement
of the material heard in the introduction. Written after the
bruising Australian federal election campaign of 2007, this
movement is possibly a reflection on the shortcomings of public
life with all its evidence of conflict, compromise and human
frailty.
Having almost completed the first movement, a major life change
occurred on 10th March 2008 with the birth of my son, Evan.
Although I knew a baby was going to arrive, no-one can quite
judge the impact of the arrival of children until it actually
happens! The composition of the Lullaby flowed quite naturally as
a little cradle-song for Evan. The lyrical violin solo is written
over a subtle series of shifting cell-like accompanying patterns
and an evolving ground bass. A longer canonic section leads in to
a series of violin cadenzas containing a veiled echo of material
heard in the opening movement. Perhaps this movement is written
as much as a lullaby for adults who crave both sleep and the
redemptive innocence of childhood. The blues-inflected,
celebratory finale transforms the lullaby figures into a joyous
Dance. It explores twisting motivic cells in a varied series of
energetic tableaux. After some exploration of darker moments, the
material plunges headlong into a fast-tempo coda that brings this
exuberant movement to a helter-skelter finish.
Published by: Australian Music Centre — 1 facsimile score (25p. -- B4 (portrait))
Difficulty: Advanced
Duration: 12 mins
First performance by Australian String Quartet at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Adelaide Town Hall) on 10 Mar 2010
Includes program note.
Revised in 2010. Revised to a single-movement structure 2015.
Typeset edition.
This edition produced Sep 21.
ISMN: 979-0-720156-42-2
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