Duration: 22 minutes

Movements:

I. Eternal, timeless -- II. Intense, dramatic

III. Scherzando

IV. Ethereal

V. Driving

Program Notes:

String Quartet No. 6 (Canticle) was commissioned by the Chiara String Quartet, with generous support provided by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska and its Hixon-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  It consists of seven moments, highly contrasting in character, with movements I and VII serving as similar bookends to the overall arch of the work.  

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The piece opens with the quartet members striking various crotales, producing bell sounds that eventually blend with the string quartet - evoking the title, Canticle.  The faster, pulse-oriented music has the members of the quartet using glass rods on their instruments and at one point quickly moves bak and forth between alternating rhythmic sub-divisions, producing extremely rapid metric modulations.  The last movement blends the string quartet with the bowing of the crotales to produce at ethereal, other-worldly finale to the canticle.

-- Pierre Jalbert

© 2017 Pierre Jalbert, String Quartet No. 6 (Canticle)