Philippe Manoury continues his recent love affair with the string quartet. He has just completed his fourth quartet for the Arditti Quartet, for over 40 years one of the most influential contemporary music ensembles in the world, the members of which are close friends of the composer.

Philippe Manoury continues his recent love affair with the string quartet. While he wrote his first quartet in 1978 as a student, the work was disregarded. It wasn’t until 2010 that he finally composed for string quartet again. That work was entitled Stringendo (meaning an acceleration in tempo) and was performed by the legendary Arditti Quartet. Tensio (Italian for tension), his second quartet which premiered the same year, is a fascinating experiment with the possibilities of timbre and quartet harmonies associated with electronics. In 2013, the Arditti premiered his third string quartet, Melencolia, at the Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo. The piece alludes to the famous engraving (with the “magic square”) of the same name by Albrecht Dürer. The piece is dreamlike and evokes the German word “Sehnsucht”, which evokes the feeling of longing.

Fragmenti is Manoury’s fourth, and most recent, string quartet.The Arditti Quartet will perform it at the Philharmonie de Paris on January 18th, 2016 as part of the String Quartet Biennale in collaboration with ProQuartet, the European Centre for Chamber Music. The Austrian premiere of Fragmenti will take place at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, also with the Arditti Quartet.

Have a look at the score of Fragmenti