Albini, Beck, Buller, Kennedy Bayer, Vaughan – “Quintets”

A thousand physical copies of our first album Quintets, music for electric guitar and string quartet by five of our best composers, have been published for our associates. Quintets is also available on iTunes.

During highSCORE FESTIVAL 2010, a range of different compositional experiences were brought together under the heading of Guitar Quintet, or string quartet with guitar. Guitar Quintet, the theme of highSCORE FESTIVAL 2010, also gave rise to the idea for this compilation: young composers getting to grips with the quintessential classical genre (the string quartet), and dealing with the spice added by the presence of an instrument whose origins are very distant from classical music (the electric guitar). There are numerous approaches to establishing a meaningful dialogue between these two worlds, that are so different from one another not only in terms of repertoire but also in terms of the characteristic timbres of the two instrument families (the acoustic sound of the strings vs. the sound of the guitar that is amplified, distorted and transformed by the electric medium). The various approaches, however, generally tend towards one of two extremes: on the one hand integrating the two sounds into a single timbre, and on the other highlighting the differences, the heterogeneity and the extraneousness of the two worlds. The five pieces in this compilation explore the many subtle hues that lie along the spectrum between these two extremes, doing so in highly personal and characteristic styles that generate surprisingly rich and original results.
By Ingrid Pustijanac