Strygekvartet nr. 3 - Hjerteblad (2024)
(String Quartet No. 3 )

My third string quartet bears the name ”HJERTEBLAD” (Heart-leaf) after the word for the smallest and youngest innermost leaves of plants. During the writing process I thought a lot about the way that plants grow, and especially the way a flower blooms, fades and then dies, before a new flower emerges. Actually, the whole string quartet is my attempt to render the texture and ephemerality of flower petals into music.

The first and second movements are inspired by time-lapse videos of plats growing; in the first movement, roots spread underground as sprouts slowly break through the earth, and in the second movement flowers grow and unfurl their petals.

The third and last movement is a kind of fading autumnal chorale, a melancholy goodbye.

In the first two movements, the four musicians make basically the same kinds of sounds at all times. However, in the first movement the players are completely synchronized, but in the second movement, they play freely and uncoordinated - rather like four flowers that grow up next to each other and constantly intertwine. 

The work was written with support from the Danish Composers’ society.

Matias Vestergård, 2025