Uploaded January 2011 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
My life's affairs decrease
My autumn thoughts are clear
unto the depths
'Tis midnight, yet my pillow
still records faint sounds.
Why do the little brooks not cease?
Why are they not at rest?
The moon has reached that sad pale gold
of early dawn.
The cock's dim crow is heard afar
Among the hills, there are no things called
wealth and fame.
They why are people walking in the hills
Before the daylight comes?
("Midnight Among the Hills," Sung Dynasty,
translated by Clara M. Candin)
The Sung Songs are one of Barbara Pentland's most elegant and refined works. Her great concern in the 1960s and 1970s was to distill materials to their most economical and concentrated form. Yet her vocal lines are lyric and, within the considerations of the serial idiom, profoundly singable.
By the middle years of the 20th century Pentland saw herself as a committed high modernist and a steadfast partisan of contemporary values. In Canadian terms she was analogous to Elizabeth Lutyens in the United Kingdom or Ruth Crawford Seeger in the United States; she shared their concerns not just about the struggle for the new, but the particular problems of a finding a place as a woman in the overwhelmingly male milieu of the international avant garde.
Her preferred brand of modernism drew on the textures and organizational principles of the Webern school but was suffused with a lyricism that was expressly individual. In the 1960s and 1970s, Pentland continued her explorations investigating such then current trends as microtones, 'found' texts, directed improvisation, and tape.
My life's affairs decrease
My autumn thoughts are clear
unto the depths
'Tis midnight, yet my pillow
still records faint sounds.
Why do the little brooks not cease?
Why are they not at rest?
The moon has reached that sad pale gold
of early dawn.
The cock's dim crow is heard afar
Among the hills, there are no things called
wealth and fame.
They why are people walking in the hills
Before the daylight comes?
("Midnight Among the Hills," Sung Dynasty,
translated by Clara M. Candin)
The Sung Songs are one of Barbara Pentland's most elegant and refined works. Her great concern in the 1960s and 1970s was to distill materials to their most economical and concentrated form. Yet her vocal lines are lyric and, within the considerations of the serial idiom, profoundly singable.
By the middle years of the 20th century Pentland saw herself as a committed high modernist and a steadfast partisan of contemporary values. In Canadian terms she was analogous to Elizabeth Lutyens in the United Kingdom or Ruth Crawford Seeger in the United States; she shared their concerns not just about the struggle for the new, but the particular problems of a finding a place as a woman in the overwhelmingly male milieu of the international avant garde.
Her preferred brand of modernism drew on the textures and organizational principles of the Webern school but was suffused with a lyricism that was expressly individual. In the 1960s and 1970s, Pentland continued her explorations investigating such then current trends as microtones, 'found' texts, directed improvisation, and tape.
![René Koering, Quatuor No 2nd mouvement, largo [second movement of two]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jbpD3mJL9O8/mqdefault.jpg "René Koering, Quatuor No 2nd mouvement, largo [second movement of two]
On dit et on répète à tous les compositeurs depuis Beethoven que la forme du quatuor à cordes est la chose la plus difficile (les vrais pervers, après vous avoir asséné cette vérité historique, vous font savoir que la vraie difficulté est le trio à cordes mais que ce divertissement nest réservé quà la catégorie quatre étoiles des compositeurs).
Je pense au contraire quil y a dans laustère (et brillante) gymnastique de quatuor une première « facilité* qui est celle des vois intermédiaires (situées entre le dessus et la basse) nécessaires à tout épanouissement. Et que ces deux voix (voies), tellement indispensables à la plénitude du discours ne sont vraiment exploitables que dans la formule du quatuor à cordes. En effet, le répartitions sur lambitus sont parfaites entre le do grave du violoncelle et lut ultime du violon, en passant par le second violon et le bienheureux alto. De là extrême confort du compositeur, libéré du handicap des deux mains au piano ou des innombrables pièges des jeux de cache cache à lorchestre. Là, tout est clair, chaque note est entendue et la virtuosité est lenfant de Bohême dont rêve limpétrant.
Cest pourquoi je me pose souvent le question des multiples et inutiles séductions ajoutées à la musique, depuis le piano jusquà lorchestres « gurreliederien », il existe, je le sais, le pur raffinement de la beauté « quartetisante ». Alors pourquoi hésiter ?
Parce quil est difficil dimaginer un audimat que satisfasse un éditeur, même passionné de quatuor, marié à un compositeur fécond seulement dans ce domaine. La carrière internationale et triomphante de Georges Onslow est là pous nous le rappeler. (Nata : Onslow est lauteur de 35 quatuors et 34 quintettes dans la continuité rare et appréciable de Schubert.)
Finalement je conclus, à titre personnel, que le quatuor à cordes simpose sans discussion possible au moment où la nostalgie du pays perdue ou égaré sempare de moi et que remonter à la surface, aborder les plages aux franges de lexistence, ne peut se faire quà la condition « quartettane ».
René Koering")
![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [1 of 2 total]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kuyEIDaKL8Y/mqdefault.jpg "Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [1 of 2 total]
ABOUT the String Quartet in Two Movements, composer Billy Jim Layton has this to say: The
quartet was written during 1955 and early 1956 while I was at the American Academy in Rome as a
Rome Prize Fellow. It is a composition to which I devoted a great deal of thought and effort and, as
I look back on it, it seems to me that it represents a kind of summation of my artistic development
and convictions up to that point. In it my aim was to achieve the widest range of expression possible
without lapsing into incoherence, by always maintaining the strongest formal control.
The thought and effort expended by Layton on this work has resulted in a Quartet which holds
qualities of extraversion and introversion in an unusual balance, with areas of high emotional
tension and vigor being set off against other statements of the utmost passivity and inwardness,
sometimes almost expressionist in esthetic. A highly complex treatment of rhythmic resources is
always in evidence, whether the music flows along with an ethereal line singing above a lightly
punctuated counterpoint, or steps out in jazzy, muscular syncops. Indeed, rhythm would seem to
be the real heart of this Quartet. In more than one section, it constitutes the entire subject under
discussion. Instrumental color, however, is another string preoccupation of the composer. The
resources of his medium are constantly exploited to the full, bringing into combination writing con
sordino and senza sordino; non vibrato and molto vibrato; col legno plus high and low pizzicato.
There are even trills beginning as whole-step intervals and gradually contracting to quarter-tones.
Every measure of the score bespeaks meticulous handling of all materials; a high consciousness of
the potency of timbre, and a delight in its manipulation.
about the composer:
Billy Jim Layton was born in Corsicana, Texas, in 1924. He studied at the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, Yale University, and Harvard. Several scholarships and prizes
were awarded him by these institutions. He has also held the Hertz Travelling Fellowship from the
University of California and the Rome Prize, 1954-57. In 1958, a grant in recognition of creative
work in music was awarded him by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in connection with
which the present recording is issued. He has received several important commissions, including
one by the Koussevitsky Foundation. Performances of his music for solo, chamber, orchestral, and
choral combinations have been given in many cities of the United States and Europe.
Claremont St ring Quartet
Marc Gottli eb, violin
Vladimi r Weisman, violin
William Schoen, viola
Irving Klein, cello
We apologize must humbly, profusely, and in a virtual paroxysm of self-deprecation, for the poor sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions per minute micro-groove recording.")
