Login

Enter your username and password

Forgotten your username or password?

Your Shopping Cart

There are no items in your shopping cart.

Work

String quartet No. 1 : Elegies and dances : string quartet

by Paul Stanhope (2008)

Score Sample

View a sample of the score of this work

Audio Sample

Performance by Australian String Quartet from the CD Selected works by AMC represented artists : vol 5

Selected products featuring this work — Display all products (3 more)

Three Quartets

$POA

This item may be available to purchase from the Australian Music Centre.
Please contact our Sales Department to confirm pricing and availability.

Display all products featuring this work (3 more)  

Work Overview

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.

Work Details

Year: 2008

Instrumentation: 2 violins, viola, cello.

Duration: 12 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Commission note: Commissioned by Musica Viva Australia.. Commissioned by Musica Viva Australia by Julia Hickman Potter, in honour of Peter Hickman’s sixtieth birthday.

First performance: by Australian String Quartet at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Adelaide Town Hall) on 10 Mar 2010

Revised in 2010. Revised to a single-movement structure 2015.

Performances of this work

7 Oct 2021: at ASQ at The Lab: Music + Moving Image – Adelaide (The Lab). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

28 Sep 2021: at Australian String Quartet at Mona – Hobart (Nolan Gallery, MONA). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

27 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Peninsula Community Theatre). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

26 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Melbourne Recital Centre). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

24 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Conservatorium Theatre, Brisbane). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

21 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Noosa). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

18 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (City Recital Hall). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

15 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Perth Concert Hall). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

10 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Adelaide Town Hall). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

10 Mar 10: featuring Australian String Quartet.

7 Mar 2010: at ASQ with Lucinda Collins (Ngeringa Farm). Featuring Australian String Quartet.

27 Nov 08: Huntington Music Festival, NSW. Featuring Tinalley String Quartet.

User reviews

Be the first to share your thoughts, opinions and insights about this work.

To post a comment please login.