- Philip Grange
String Quartet
- Peters Edition Limited (World)
Programme Note
This two-movement work was partly inspired by the concept of Sprezzatura as described by the fictitious composer Dr Gunilla Dahl-Soot in Robertson Davies’s witty novel The Lyre of Orpheus. She rather flambouyantly states that it is “…a contempt for the obvious, for beaten paths…noble negligence, a sudden leap in art toward a father shore that could not be reached by the ferry-boats of custom.” Whilst I felt it would not be possible to embark on a total reappraisal of every element of music, this approach nonetheless partly accounts for the unusual layout of the movements. These consist of a Scherzo followed by a Notturno con Capricci, in which the musical ideas of the Scherzo are transformed into dream-like sequences in the Capricci. This process takes on an increasingly nightmarish intensity before returning to the music with which the Scherzo opens.
This work was commissioned with funds from Durham City Arts and Northern Arts by the Kreutzer String Quartet, who premiered it on 16 March 2003 at the Gala Theatre, Durham.
Philip Grange