String Quartet No. 6

Description

Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Violoncello — The most straightforward and shortest of any of my string quartets to date, the sixth employs only two thematic gestures which are used, perhaps obsessively, throughout: (a) brief melodic lines formed principally of sevenths, and (b) an ascending scale.xa0 The formal design is born out of the continual combining, interweaving and juxtaposition of these two elements, which collect themselves into two movements played without pause: the first predominantly slow and pensive, the second rhythmic and driving.Quartet No. 6 is approximately 16 minutes in duration.xa0 The score was commissioned by the Los Angeles-based Calder Quartet, four extremely talented young musicians with whom I performed at the Aspen, Colorado, Music Festival, and is dedicated to my wife, Elizabeth on the occasion of our fifty years together.xa0 The first movement is written in memory of my father-in-law Howard Deischer (1907 – 2005), who died during the course of composing.xa0 The work was completed in April of 2005 in Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida.— Sydney Hodkinson