Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Quincunx, op. 44 (1960)
Josephine Nendick & John Shirley-Quirk, soloists
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Norman Del Mar
Speaking once about the dedication of her Sixth String Quartet to the painter Francis Bacon, Elizabeth Lutyens compared the method of its composition with the artist’s tendency to work very quickly when he wanted to make a great nervous impact. The quartet was written at one sitting in twelve hours and produced something of the same nerve affecting qualities, and the circumstances of its dedication give us an insight into much of her subsequent music. The style which she subsequently evolved and refined, and which is seen to perfection in Quincunx has much to do with this immediacy of nervous impact. It is a style which above all enables her to compose with great speed. The result, as in a good improvisation, is that we feel the closest contact with the initial creative activity, and this lends her best work considerable directness and vitality. The compositional technique used is an analogy of her stream of musical consciousness, and places much reliance on a continuously evolving thread of melody. This supple melodic line, which in an orchestral work like Quincunx (1960) will be found scattered across the whole score, connects harmonic incidents of varying density and is in its turn punctuated by them. The scope of her melodic inspiration with its frequently wide spaced intervals and complex rhythmic organisation is considerable, and in Quincunx it embodies a vision of sombre beauty and deep elegiac power. The work encloses a setting for unaccompanied baritone of words by Sir Thomas Browne beginning: ‘But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and ’tis time to close the five ports of knowledge.’ This imagery is carried through into the musical structure where five tutti sections (the central one introduced by the unaccompanied baritone solo) sandwich four movements that feature in turn the main orchestral departments, wind, strings, percussion and finally brass. --Anthony Payne
Art by Nom Kinnear King
Quincunx, op. 44 (1960)
Josephine Nendick & John Shirley-Quirk, soloists
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Norman Del Mar
Speaking once about the dedication of her Sixth String Quartet to the painter Francis Bacon, Elizabeth Lutyens compared the method of its composition with the artist’s tendency to work very quickly when he wanted to make a great nervous impact. The quartet was written at one sitting in twelve hours and produced something of the same nerve affecting qualities, and the circumstances of its dedication give us an insight into much of her subsequent music. The style which she subsequently evolved and refined, and which is seen to perfection in Quincunx has much to do with this immediacy of nervous impact. It is a style which above all enables her to compose with great speed. The result, as in a good improvisation, is that we feel the closest contact with the initial creative activity, and this lends her best work considerable directness and vitality. The compositional technique used is an analogy of her stream of musical consciousness, and places much reliance on a continuously evolving thread of melody. This supple melodic line, which in an orchestral work like Quincunx (1960) will be found scattered across the whole score, connects harmonic incidents of varying density and is in its turn punctuated by them. The scope of her melodic inspiration with its frequently wide spaced intervals and complex rhythmic organisation is considerable, and in Quincunx it embodies a vision of sombre beauty and deep elegiac power. The work encloses a setting for unaccompanied baritone of words by Sir Thomas Browne beginning: ‘But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and ’tis time to close the five ports of knowledge.’ This imagery is carried through into the musical structure where five tutti sections (the central one introduced by the unaccompanied baritone solo) sandwich four movements that feature in turn the main orchestral departments, wind, strings, percussion and finally brass. --Anthony Payne
Art by Nom Kinnear King
