Strictly speaking, is being active, as what is either one or possibly two related quartets are proceeding at his usual very torturous pace, his only completed work for strings to date being a sextet for the unusual combination of four violins and two cellos (premièred at St. Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham, 23. i. 1986).



Only Tippett's third quartet (of five) sits in that period, but I'd certainly nominate it as 'notable'. Britten's second of three, likewise. Numbers 5 to 10 of Elizabeth Maconchy's 13 and both of those by Doreen Carwithen (a.k.a. Mrs William Alwyn) were also composed in these years.

I think only Mr Grew employs the "Royal We" in that sense here?

"We" being my small music-theatre ensemble    Unfortunately the quartet's temporarily disbanded due to players moving on.

You're getting closer

Those posts -which began with an answer to a comment made by another poster, which it would have been discourteous to ignore, have been moved as requested, though I'd like to remind Mr Grew that it is in the nature of these fora of a primarily social nature that posts at a tangent to the main business will occur, and that unlike his repertoire thread (where his decision to penalise digressions by deducting points led to a plethora of posts doing exactly that) this board has, in general, a less censorious attitude to off-topic posts. It not within his jurisdiction to dictate strictness within threads, but we thank him for mentioning it, taking it to imply inter alia that when this discussion comes to deal with the quartets of Shostakovich (as it surely must at some point) he will treat them, the composer, and the discussion of their qualities as seriously as the work of any other great composer.

I  am uneasy with the implication of the above, and of the title of this thread, that chamber music is ipso facto more 'serious' than orchestral music. A good composer does not 'fiddle with colours': he/she uses instrumentation to express the musical thought with the utmost clarity. That is why Rimsky-Korsakov insisted that there is no such thing as a well-orchestrated piece, only a well-written piece.

Quite so, rauschwerk. The distinction implied here between "fancy fiddling with colours" and "purely musical quality" is spurious, not just in the context of orchestral music, but in chamber music too. I think the point member Grew is trying unsuccessfully to make is that the string quartet has often historically been used as a medium for a composer's more complex and personal thoughts (prime examples being Beethoven and Shostakovich) away from the more "public" arena of concert hall and opera house (and, in DSCH's case for many years, Stalin's scrutiny) and with an instrumentation which through its relative timbral homogeneity encourages concentration on traditionally "basic elements" - pitches and rhythms, and structures where these are foregrounded. But this description hardly covers the entire quartet repertoire, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and it's a matter of taste whether one regards "fiddling" with sounds or "fiddling" with notes as inherently more "serious".

Interestingly, though, some other similar chamber music groupings (string trio, for example) are traditionally thought of as less serious. I don't feel one needs to subscribe to old ideas of what a particular instrumentation is supposed to be "for", either as composers or listeners. As far as I'm concerned a string quartet is a piece for two violins, a viola and a cello which is overwhelmingly likely to be played by a tightly-knit group of players which pays close attention to the finest subtleties and precision in all aspects of ensemble playing, and for whom therefore one can expect things that an ad hoc ensemble wouldn't be able to do.

Surely that should be on What's that burning??

The reduced salt Natex of string quartets for me are opp 130, 131 and 132

To what extent are String Quartets music to listen to - as opposed to being a mental discipline and challenge for the players?