String Quartet No. 3 (String Quartet)

The score for Colin Matthews' String Quartet No.3.

Colin Matthews’ Third String Quartet (1994) was partly born from substantial revisions made to String Quartet No.2 (1985, rev. 1989), closing with a slow movement that Matthews had imagined concluding the previous work. The 35-minute String Quartet No.3 is cast in five movements. The first is intense, dark, and densely textured, closing with a reticent chorale; the second a machinic ostinato built on pizzicato strings. The central movement is a wheeling scherzo, with the ghostly quartet muted throughout; a garish waltz follows and recalls a parodic version of the chorale. That same material reappears in fragmentary form in a slow, somnambulant finale.