String Quartet No. 3

The score for Colin Matthews' String Quartet No.3.

Colin Matthews’ Third String Quartet (1994) was partly born from substantial revisions made to String Quartet No.2 (1985, rev. 1989), closing with a slow movement that Matthews had imagined concluding the previous work. The 35-minute String Quartet No.3 is cast in five movements. The first is intense, dark, and densely textured, closing with a reticent chorale; the second a machinic ostinato built on pizzicato strings. The central movement is a wheeling scherzo, with the ghostly quartet muted throughout; a garish waltz follows and recalls a parodic version of the chorale. That same material reappears in fragmentary form in a slow, somnambulant finale.