Water Music - String Quartet

Water Music (1937)

for two violins, viola, and cello

Duration: ca. 14' 10"

A 1937 string quartet by a composer perhaps better known as arranger and orchestrator of some 300 Broadway and London productions, Water Music uses the folk tune "Sailors' Hornpipe" as a starting point. But, as the publisher points out, it "soon becomes a witty compendium of modernist techniques, though omitting 12-tone." Not very far into the piece, for example, Bennett puts each player in a different key. He fragments and reassembles the tune to dramatic effect well beyond what one would expect from an essentially trivial folk melody.

Includes score and parts.