String Quartet No. 18

in preparation

The first idea for Quartet 18 came, as often happens, in the middle of the night: I woke up and wrote down a single violin line that I had in my head. The next morning, I extended this idea a little for quartet in a fairly fast tempo, but for some days I couldn’t think what the overall shape of the piece might be, until I had another middle of the night idea, again a violin line but very slow and quiet. This was clearly the beginning of a slow movement, and it then occurred to me that I could write a two-movement piece on the model of Beethoven’s last piano sonata. So, a fast, energetic first movement followed by a slow set of variations.

The first movement begins with sonata form elements, followed by a fugue, and later goes without a pause into a scherzo. The slow movement starts with my nocturnal theme played by each instrument in turn, from 1st violin down to cello. The variations go through all twelve keys in rising fifths, ending with a high G on the 1st violin which is felt as the dominant of C, and expressing a simplicity towards which the rest of the quartet has been aiming.

Quartet 18 was commissioned by the Marchus Trust and is dedicated to the Kreutzer Quartet.

DM