Output details

Quartet Choreography

All of the performances on the DVD were produced and edited by Neil Heyde, apart from Finnissy’s Second String Quartet, which was edited by Amanda Bayley.

This is one of the main outputs from a large British Academy Research Grant – ‘From Composition to Performance: innovations and interactions in contemporary string quartets’. The aims of the recording are explained in the accompanying booklet, written with a general audience in mind, but it should be clarified that it was vital to this part of the project to avoid didactic revelation of the physical content of the pieces. Instead, the film has been edited to allow the material and the quartet’s responses to it to speak for itself.

Each of the three selected pre-existing pieces has made a unique and important contribution to the development of a physical choreography of quartet playing, and specific devices in all of the pieces have been explored in related written outputs, as well as a series of research events and concerts at the Royal Academy of Music, and conference presentations.

Related output includes:

Neil Heyde: ‘Choreographing the Instrument, Body and Ensemble’ (School of Advanced Study/Institute of Musical Research, 2012) http://www.sas.ac.uk/videos-and-podcasts/music/choreographing-instrument-body-and-ensemble

Neil Heyde and Amanda Bayley: ‘Interpreting indeterminacy: Filming Lutosławski’s String Quartet’, Polish Music since 1945 (Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2013)

Neil Heyde and Amanda Bayley: ‘Communicating through notation: Michael Finnissy’s Second String Quartet from composition to performance’ in R. Woodley and A. Bayley (ed.) Notation and Practice: Essays in Musical Performance and Textuality (CUP, 2014 [delayed from 2010, and already cited elsewhere])

Amanda Bayley and Michael Clarke: Evolution and Collaboration, the composition, rehearsal and performance of Finnissy’s Second String Quartet (w. Kreutzer Quartet) [co-production, University of Huddersfield, CeReNeM, University of Wolverhampton, Higher Education Academy/Palatine, 2011)

http://www.musicstudies.org/JIMS2009/Bayley_JIMS_0932108.pdf

http://www.musicstudies.org/springFall2009.html