<emString Quartets Nos. 2, 3 and 7 span a large period of time in my compositional activity, which might suggest diversity as a result of the large time gap. But they are not so different. It is only in the diversity of the shaping of time that they are perceived differently. What all the works have in common is that they have a clear architectural form, which is only obscured by the simultaneity of different layers of time and their different speeds of progression. This layering creates a structural complexity that eludes immediate listening. All these string quartets are also similar in that they mark the end of respective sections of work or even creative periods. As the supreme discipline of all musical genres, their perfection allows for the highest quality aesthetic expression of a musical idea. The string quartet completely rejects the primarily and foremost zeitgeist-oriented formulation of musical processes based solely on quantity. Composing for a string quartet is necessarily heterogeneous and discontinuous, rather than linearly redundant and abbreviated. Beethoven's Great Fugue is paradigmatic for this “final” finding. As a composer, I have made use of this insight and pursued it as a guideline for an empathetic discourse when composing string quartets in a discipline that continues to fascinate me.
String Quartet No. 7 is a commission from the NeoQuartet in Gdańsk, financed by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. It is dedicated to the excellent NeoQuartet.
Ernst Helmuth Flammer