Pige

Lotta Wennäkoski's Pige (2021-2022) for string quartet was commissioned to be paired with the Death and the Maiden quartet by Franz Schubert ("pige" is Danish for girl). The composer tells:

"The first movement Vorüber, ach, vorüber! is based on the first half of Schubert's lied lying behind his The Death and the Maiden quartet. The ”maiden's song” in the beginning of the lied has not found its way to his string quartet, so I wanted to use this material in mine. The second move-ment Daktylus borrows its idea from the haunting pulse of Schubert's chant of Death. Something fierce and something soundless can be heard here - along with other variants on the dactyl rhythm. For example, I've written a lyrically flowing melody based on the same rhythmic pattern (long-short-short).

Schubert's quartet is wonderful music and of course a cornerstone of the repertoire, and ”the death and the maiden” is a strong, tempting and gloomy motif in art history. On the other hand, I just couldn't help seeing the motif also as a - somewhat passé - image of an old male desiring the ulti-mately young female body. The third movement thus turns its gaze to the girl herself. Pigen og scrapbogen, The Girl and the Scrapbook, is joyful textural music - compiled of fragments and freely handled quotations that might spring to mind when thinking of a vital girl's life."