String Quartet No. 1 was commissioned by me, and was premiered at the

Dartington School of Music in England by the Arditti Quartet in 1981.

The work was later revised, and this new version received its American

premiere by the Juilliard Quartet in 1983.

The first section of this one-movement work was written in New York

City. This allegro passage is marked Molto aggressivo and is

characterized by biting dissonant chords played by the entire quartet,

and knotty, ascending chromatic lines played first by the Cello, then by

the others as well.

The second section (and the remainder of the piece) was written in the

calm, stark beauty of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of

Scotland, when I lent Caltabiano my house. Marked legato e dolce, this

andante section is characterized by gently moving harmony and a

sustained descending modal melody shared by all the players.

The main body of the piece is a transformation of these materials to the

point where they sound alike. The transformation section begins with

three brief allegro sections using material from the opening of the

work. As the sections progress, they become somewhat slower and less

chromatic, and are interrupted three times by sustained modal chords

from the previous dolce section.

The andante section returns, and over the course of its development

becomes faster and more chromatic and forceful, while the melody becomes

more restricted in range and is often interrupted by sharp chords taken

from the allegro section. The following two aggressivo sections become

slower, more obviously modal, and more constrainedly pivoted, so that

the two kinds of music now begin to sound almost identical. At this

point, the music reaches its climax on an open fifth, played by all the

instruments.

In the three short sections which end the piece, the music again

separates into two different sets of material, similar to the first two

sections of the work.

The quartet can be heard as having a fixed dominant key area, A (the

climactic open fifth), and movable tonics, C, F#, and Eb (the allegro,

andante and recapitulation sections, respectively). One tone row is in

use for each of the expositional sections, and each starts with eleven

pitches, and through a sequence of chromatic transformations uses fewer

and fewer notes. This makes for a remarkable concentration of the

expressive dimensions of the original material, implicit throughout, but

finally movingly explicit.

Peter Maxwell Davies New York, 1983