Spaces in a Space

David Stoll’s fourth String Quartet, recorded by the Bingham String Quartet, is now available on CD and as a download (in three separate movements).

 

STRING QUARTET no. 4

“The first idea for this quartet came from a remark made by the potter Emmanuel Cooper at a private showing of his work: “You should write a piece of music to go with an exhibition of pots”.  When I embarked upon writing my fourth String Quartet, I decided to take up the idea. I was interested – as so often in my chamber music writing – in combining the purely musical and the programmatic.

 

“The first Movement presents the clay on the wheel, gradually being formed into shape and, at the right magical moment, being raised to its full stature. The second Movement, a scherzo, takes place in the heat of the furnace where the different musical motifs are drawn together and fixed.  The slow trio is an expression of the pot as it will be.

 

“The third Movement presents the pots one by one, a family of related but subtly different objects, first as simple earthenware, and then glazed and coloured.  Gradually the attention is drawn to the spaces inside each pot and between the different pots.  The Quartet ends with this space.”