String Quartet No. 1 (String Quartet)

The score to John Woolrich’s String Quartet No.1

John Woolrich is a leading composer for string quartet, composing works of intensity and imagination for the form, exemplified in his multi-volume A Book of Inventions. His String Quartet No.1 (1995) demonstrates his facility with these forces. The 12-minute piece is cast in five discrete sections. The first and third have a mechanistic character that is a frequent motif of Woolrich’s music. The second and fourth are sustained and elegiac in character. The piece concludes with a characteristic miniature – a whispered envoy (‘A last leaf’) that is scarcely a minute long. This product comprises the score.