String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9, by Ben Johnston

String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9

by Ben Johnston

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

includes pdf liner notes

Purchasable with gift card

$9.99 USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9 via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 4 days

Purchasable with gift card

$15.99 USD or more

1.	String Quartet No. 9: Strong, Calm, Slow 06:21	buy track
2.	String Quartet No. 9: Fast, Elated 03:42	buy track
3.	String Quartet No. 9: Slow, Expressive 04:11	buy track
4.	String Quartet No. 9: Vigorous And Defiant 05:52	buy track
5.	Crossings: Verging, String Quartet No. 3 11:10	buy track
6.	Crossings: The Silence 01:43	buy track
7.	Crossings: The Ascent, String Quartet No. 4, Amazing Grace 10:34	buy track
8.	String Quartet No. 2 : Light And Quick: With Grace And Humor 04:36	buy track
9.	String Quartet No. 2 - Intimate, Spacious 04:59	buy track
10.	String Quartet No. 2 - Extremely Minute And Intense; Not Fast 07:34	buy track

about

featuring The Kepler Quartet

Ben Johnston's (1926-2019) music has reached a wide and diverse audience, both at home and abroad, without compromising its high seriousness or its depth of philosophic purpose. His music shows the confluence of several traditions of music-making that have flourished within the United States. In the 1950s his output was characterized by the neoclassicism of his teacher Darius Milhaud. In the 1960s he explored serial techniques and, at the end of the decade, indeterminacy.

From 1960 onward the overriding technical preoccupation of his music has been its use of just intonation, the tuning system of the music of ancient cultures as well as that of many living traditions worldwide. Johnston is a pioneer in the use of microtones and non-tempered tuning, rationalizing and going beyond Harry Partch's achievements in this domain.

His ten string quartets are among the most fascinating collections of work ever produced by an American composer. And yet, like similarly imposing peaks in the American musical landscape — Ives's Universe Symphony, for example, or the Studies for Player Piano of Conlon Nancarrow — these works have, for decades now, remained more known about than known, more talked about than played. All the quartets have been performed in public (with one exception, the immensely difficult String Quartet No. 7), but only four have previously been recorded. The scores have been analyzed by musicologists and theorists fascinated by their fusion of advanced compositional techniques (serialism with just intonation, for example; microtonality with a kind of neoclassical revisionism), but they have been too little heard.

The Kepler Quartet's recordings－this disc is the first of a series of three, prepared with Johnston's active support and supervision－offer lively and scrupulously accurate readings that unlock the door to these marvelous pieces. Like Ives and Nancarrow before him, there is the sense that Johnston's time has finally come.

credits

released January 1, 2006

The Kepler Quartet

license

about

New World Records Brooklyn, New York

Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.

We are dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies.

contact / help

Contact New World Records

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9, you may also like:

The Oracle
by Angel Bat Dawid

supported by 8 fans who also own “String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9”

Angel, I heard your interview with Jason Woodbury on Aquarium Drunkard's "Transmissions" podcast today. It was truly remarkable and touched my heart. I bought this album immediately afterward and am so grateful to you for this nourishing music in these strange, trying days. I hope I can time my next trip to Chicago to be able to see you perform live. Thank you! Michael Feltes
go to album
Post-Chromodal Out!
by Hafez Modirzadeh

supported by 7 fans who also own “String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9”
go to album
Artlessly Falling
by Mary Halvorson's Code Girl

supported by 7 fans who also own “String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9”

Mary Halvorson is a genius composer and guitarist who has developed her own musical language, and with Code Girl she has incorporated poetry into that language. Incredible compositions and lyricism (each track is a different kind of poem). Halvorson's playing is as great as usual, and all the other members of the band sound great. Robert Wyatt's singing in particular works extremely well in the tracks he's featured. Highly, highly recommend. rat
go to album
Landvættirnar fjórar
by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson

Icelandic composer Gudmundur Steinn Gunnarsson builds playful, experimental motifs around 13th-century mythological creatures. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 8, 2022
go to album
Silhouettes
by Justina Jaruseviciute

A stirring set of chamber music from this composer from Berlin, which seem to capture hope & sadness at once. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 5, 2021
go to album
The Sea Ranch Songs
by Aleksandra Vrebalov & Kronos Quartet

featured on Bandcamp Radio Dec 26, 2017
go to album
Travel
by The Necks

supported by 7 fans who also own “String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, & 9”

You'd think that the statement "this is the work of amazing musicians playing together" should apply to everything that I choose to listen to, but I still feel the need to emphasize it here. Four songs, 17-21 minutes each, and every moment is alive with intensity, filled with atmosphere, shrouded with energy that pulls you forward even in the most repetitive or simplistic moments. Travel is dramatic, in the calmest, coolest way, and it is very good. rvss.eel
go to album