Hunting Quartet
3rd string quartet
String Quartet - Digital Sheet Music

String quartet - difficult - Digital Download

SKU: S9.Q6174

3rd string quartet. Composed by Joerg Widmann. This edition: score and parts. Downloadable, Score and parts. Duration 12 minutes. Schott Music - Digital #Q6174. Published by Schott Music - Digital (S9.Q6174).

The Jagdquartett (Hunt Quartet), which Jörg Widmann wrote as his third string quartet in 2003, following the Choralquartett, also begins with a visible gesture. After a short signal cry from the performers, the piece starts by quoting Robert Schumann's Papillons op. 2, and for its full duration retains this gesture, these starting sounds. The degrees of recognizability do change continuously, to be sure, in the furious, racing organism of the score. The contours change into forms on another level, yet now and then the begining material returns clearly to the fore, initiated anew by a cry from the performers, and is then digested or mutated as a rhythmic study into a field of harmonic experimentation. On rare occasions, there are moments of pause - as though the musicians were testing the atmosphere, as though they were sensing the weather, so as ultimately to continue playing the quartet across the fields an forests of notes. A hunt after joyful performance, a chase, the whip cracking, after the thing to be shot, the sound, its performer, perhaps the composer himself? - A last shout, morendo, dal niente... - The victim is not the audience, at any rate. When comparing the output of string quartets from the 18th century to the time of Schumann, it appears to have dropped considerably. Schumann composed only three complete quartets, all of them in the so-called ‘chamber music year’ 1842. Jörg Widmann, who counts Robert Schumann among his greatest inspirations, finished a series of five string quartets in 2005, at the same age as Schumann. The quartets in the cycle form in themselves the characters of the movements of the classical quartet. Jagdquartett represents the fast middle movement, the scherzo. Widmann‘s work appears rough and wild in the style of Schumann’s alter ego Florestan. His hunt begins in the tempo of ‘allegro vivace assai’ with the final theme of Schumann‘s Papillons which often appears or is cited in many of Schumann’s compositions. Widmann eventually dismantles the thematic material of his fierce quartet, thus skeletonising his prey.

Comme ceux de son professeur Wolfgang Rihm, les cinq quatuors à cordes de Jörg Widman se présentent sous forme de courtes études. Si on les exécute séparément, l'idée centrale technique et esthétique de chacun d'eux se retrouve au premier plan. Exécutés en cycle, ils se rapprochent en revanche de la forme classique en plusieurs mouvements.