String Quartets 1-3 is a 1991 album by the Balanescu Quartet (Alexander Balanescu, Jonathan Carney, Kate Musker, and Tony Hinnigan) and the fifteenth release by Michael Nyman. It is the second album of his music (after Out of the Ruins) on which he did not perform or conduct, though he does provide liner notes. String Quartet No. 3 is built out of Out of the Ruins and became a fixture in numerous Nyman film scores in the 1990s.
The album was issued by Argo Records with two different covers. Decca Records reissued the album in the UK on July 8, 2002, as part of a The British Music Collection, giving it yet a third cover.
Nyman's four string quartets are the subject of chapter 7 in Pwyll ap Siôn's The Music of Michael Nyman: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts.[1]
The album is the first of several recordings of the Nyman string quartets. The Lyric Quartet would also record String Quartets 2 and 3, and sections of String Quartet No. 4 on String Quartets 2, 3 & 4/If & Why (2002). The Nyman Quartet (Musker and Hinnigan with violinists Gabrielle Lester and Catherine Thompson), according to the liner notes of Acts of Beauty • Exit no Exit (2006), is set to record all four some time in the future.
String Quartet No. 1
The String Quartet No. 1 (1985) was commissionned by the Arditti Quartet. Nyman had attended a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Grosse Fuge by the group, and found it the most theatrical performance on a string quartet he had ever witnessed, performed as though Beethoven had been trying to break through the limitations of the string quartet to create an orchestral sound. The quartet was originally intended to be a "compendiunm" of string quartet literature, but he decided that two pieces from different eras were enough of a contrast. It is built out of three distinct and diverse pre-existing music sources: John Bull's Walsingham Variations, Arnold Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2, and Alex North's "Unchained Melody". The use of Bull is an homage to his professor, Thurston Dart, who presented Nyman with the Musica Britannica edition of Bull's keyboard works as a graduation gift. "Walsingham" was a popular song in Bull's time, and Nyman's use of "Unchained Melody" (originally written for a 1955 prison film titled Unchained and famously covered by The Righteous Brothers, and the favorite song of Nyman's wife, Aet) is a contemporary equivalent. As noted by Pwyll Ap Siôn, [2] "Unchained Melody" is musically related to "Walsingham," as its opening three-note pattern of C-D-E is a slight variation of the melody of "Walsingham." "Unchained Melody" enters in section H (measure 274) over a bass line of variation 9 of "Walsingham" that previously appeared in section E.
Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2 is notable in two ways--first, it broke with convention by adding a part for a soprano vocalist, and second, it broke away from the tonal language standard and paved the way for modernist music. Nyman incorporates the Schoenberg material beginning in section B, and it does not return until section I. The material Nyman uses is an eight note (two measure) phrase for the cello transcribed by Nyman for first violin. Siôn notes[3] that Nyman compresses the nearly two octave phrase into one octave. When it returns in section I, Nyman has added tremolo, as well as syncopation more characteristic of his own style.
String Quartet No. 2
String Quartet No. 2 (1988) was commissioned for a dance work called Miniatures, choreographed and performed by Shobana Jeyasingh, who dictated the rhythmic structure of the piece, based on the South Indian Bharata Natyam tradition. Melodically and harmonically, it is Western classical music, while structurally it is Karnatak music. The Balanescu Quartet performed this work with the original dance as well as adding it to their concert repertoire. Miniatures was renamed Configurations when Jeyasingh added two additional dancers to the choreography.
Each of the six movements are in different rhythms: the first movement is 4-beat, the second 5-beat, the third 6-beat, the fourth 7-beat, and the fifth, 9-beat (2+3+2+2). The sixth and final movement is in multiple cycles of the preceding beat patterns.
String Quartet No. 3
String Quartet No. 3 (1990), commissioned by Alexander Balanescu, is based on Romanian folk music, along with material from his choral work Out of the Ruins, via a process Nyman describes as "translation." It affected much of Nyman's composition throughout the 1990s--riffs, in particular, a seven-note scalar [disambiguation needed] ostinato, from it appear in À la folie, Carrington (in which it was used as a temp track and ultimately was transformed into a theme for Lytton Strachey), Practical Magic (not used in the finished film), The End of the Affair, and The Claim. The translation is not as simple as it may sound, as Pwyll ap Siôn notes,[4] the first violin has new melodic material higher than the highest notes of the soprano melody, which is largely for the second violin. In addition, he elides caesuras and makes use of the stringed instruments' ability to sustain far longer than a human voice. Among the passages new to the string quartet are measures 17-24, 125-126, and a cello part beginning at measure 63.
Some cause of the variation is that the quartet is a celebration of the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu, whereas Out of the Ruins is an expression of the hopelessness after an earthquake. Siôn[5] describes numerous places where the accents and descriptors of the work indicate a very different feeling and approach to the music, with the quartet being much more aggravated, while the choral work reflects sorrow without indignation.
Like the first String Quartet, the piece is a reflection of Nyman's postgraduate work with Thurston Dart, who sent him to Romania in 1965 to gather folk music. The Romanian folk melodies that have been added to Out of the Ruins were all gathered on that trip.
Track listing
String Quartet No. 2
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
String Quartet No. 3
- beginning
- fig. D
String Quartet No. 1
- beginning
- fig. B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
Personnel
- Michael Nyman, composer and liner notes
- Balanescu Quartet:
- Alexander Balanescu: violin I
- Jonathan Carney: violin II
- Kate Musker: viola
- Anthony Hinnigan: cello
- Producer: Andrew Cornall
- Engineer: John Dunkerley
- Tape editor: Simon Bertram
- Publisher: Kelly Music
- Series design: Joe Ewart at Assorted Images
- Art direction: Ann Bradbeer
- Cover art: Charcoal Drawings of the Balanescu Quartet by Paul Richards
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Just to set the record straight
Since most of the comments about this movie refer to it as a
philmnut from United States - 9 February 2005"Replacements clone," a few lines about the history of "Second String"
are in order. "Second String" was originally set up as a feature film
at 20th Century Fox in the late 1980’s by producer Jere Cunningham
based on his original idea. Several drafts were written by several
writers. At the tail end of the development, Fox assigned Dylan Sellers
as studio exec to the project. The project then died at Fox.Years later, when Sellers was a producer at Warner Bros, he developed
"The Replacements" at that studio. According to Screenwriter Online:
"Sellers came up with the idea for ‘The Replacements’ while
recuperating from a bout with the flu. He enlisted the help of a
friend, screenwriter Vince McKewin, Rush Hour, and together they
crafted a comedy based loosely on the events of the 1987 NFL players
strike." So, for the record, no matter what you think of "Second String" as a
piece of entertainment, something written in the late 80’s and early
90’s can’t be a clone of something concepted and written years
afterward, even in Hollywood.
A cleaned-up "Replacements" clone…
The nice thing about this down-to-earth-hosed-over-qb-wins-the-big-one
toomanymovies from Md - 14 April 2004film
is that your wife doesn’t walk into the room just as a very foul word
comes
pouring out of the tv set. In fact, she’ll enjoy it with you because
there
are no drugs, outrageous sex, or make-me-sick-and-shudder bone crunching
neck snapping hits ala "Any Given Sunday" happening here. Jon Voight
starts
off as the despicable coach one can’t help but detest (pompous control
freak), but he then surprises you by confessing his shortcomings to the
miracle game winning 4th string qb he cut from a previous team, realizing
that loose cannon (improvising) qbs CAN win games, ala Johnny Unitas, Fran
Tarkenton, and Doug Flutie. It is not deep, but definitely predictable,
and
is still a watchable, easy going, low-paid-guys-with-heart-DO-win, kind of
dvd rental. This NOT Ben Hur! A good rainy day at home or drivein (good
luck) film. Don’t think so hard. Relax.
A good replacement for "The Replacements"
We just got "Second String" on video today, and I always the sucker for
Blockbuster_Employee - 22 October 2003underdog movies, and after reading the synopsis on the box, decided to
check
it out. I was rather impressed by this small release (we only got two
copies in). Now, I too, got the whole "Replacements-wannabe" vibe that
several of the other reviewers may have had. However, I really got into
this one a lot more. I thought it had a much better, and more
importantly,
believable story to it than the "Replacements" did. I thought Voight did
a
much better job than Hackman ever did as the old coach. Bellows was great
as the QB, and since his 5-year stint on TV, its great to see he’s making
a
comeback. I particularly liked when Bellows helped out his teammates with
their physical and mental aspects of their game. While other movies have
done this several times over, "Second String" doesn’t have that corny
feeling that is left over for the viewer to digest. Instead, it adds a
little humor into it. I chuckled a few times as the players were counting
up how much their running-back would pay up for the Superbowl party
everytime he dropped the football. If you manage to find this treasure
somewhere in the back of our store and are trying to avoid some of the
more
recent blockbusters that have been released, try giving it a chance. I’m
sure you’ll be quite impressed.
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