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CONTEMPORARY STRING QUARTETS

Modern Music for String Quartet

The string quartet remains one of the most powerful and expressive chamber‑music ensembles, inspiring composers for more than 250 years. Its combination of two violins, viola, and cello offers unmatched clarity, intimacy, and structural depth.

This page presents Lior Navok’s contemporary string quartets — including the thematically driven Hope Cycles — alongside a curated selection of modern repertoire. The page provides performers with a resource for exploring new music for this iconic ensemble.

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HOPE CYCLES (string quartet no. 2)

for string quartet

Duration:

24 minutes
 

Instrumentation:   

violins (2); viola and cello

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Year Composed:  

2004
 

Written For:            
Borromeo String Quartet

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Commissioned By:

Koussevitzky Music Foundation
for the Borromeo String Quartet

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Premiere Performance:

Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival

The Borromeo String Quartet:
Nicholas Kitchenm violin
Kristopher Tong, violin
Mai Motobuchi, viola
Yeesun Kim, cello

contemporary string quartets

THEMES:

MIDDLE EAST

Program Notes:


String Quartet No. 2 – “Hope Cycles,” in one movement, focuses on the endless conflict between Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East from the perspective of ordinary individuals. As an Israeli myself, I often struggle to convey to European/American audiences the true tragedy: that of the individual person, rather than the sanitized images often presented in the media.

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The music captures feelings of fear, hate, anger, love, remorse, and the claustrophobia and uncertainty of living under daily threat, regardless of one's affiliation. I believe that hope for a genuine peaceful resolution and a better life is what sustains people in such circumstances. Yet, between moments of hope, reality intrudes once more, with more innocent victims and shattered families, most of whose stories never reach the international media, which seems to prioritize only large-scale tragedies.

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The viola symbolizes such an individual confronting the harsh realities of life. The quartet comprises interconnected sections that depict the brutal fate faced and the resignation to it as a natural aspect of existence. It portrays emotional turbulence, instability, conflict, lamentation, detachment, hope, disillusionment, farewell, and the cyclical nature of destiny, moving on to claim the next victim.

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Throughout the quartet, there are several short thematic fragments and motifs that recur in various iterations to evoke heightened emotional responses toward the conclusion. Some of these motifs draw from the half scale of the Arabic “Maqam Hijaz” and snippets of Jewish music, which, ironically, share both auditory and historical connections. Despite the charged subject matter, I have chosen to temper the emotional expression, maintaining a somewhat restrained demeanor throughout, punctuated only by occasional bursts of emotion, as if the audience were observing the events from a removed, filtered perspective.

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String Quartet No. 2 – “Hope Cycles” was composed for the Borromeo String Quartet, commissioned by The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress, and is dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky.

Abstract
Hope Cycles is a one‑movement string quartet that reflects the human cost of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through the eyes of ordinary individuals. The work moves through cycles of fear, anger, tenderness, resignation, and fragile hope, using recurring motifs drawn from both Arabic Maqam Hijaz and Jewish musical fragments — two traditions that share deep historical and sonic connections. The viola serves as the symbolic voice of the individual caught in the conflict, navigating a landscape of emotional turbulence and restrained expression.

LISTEN

Audio

VIEW SCORE

Score Sample

​Score of Hope Cycles for string quartet

About Contemporary String Quartet Music

The string quartet has long been a laboratory for musical innovation. Contemporary quartets explore new harmonic languages, extended techniques, rhythmic complexity, and thematic storytelling, while still embracing the ensemble’s traditional clarity and expressive depth.

Modern composers continue to expand the quartet’s possibilities, creating works that range from intimate and introspective to bold and theatrical. These compositions contribute to the evolving repertoire for string quartet, offering performers technically engaging and artistically rewarding music for both recital and professional performance settings.

String Quartets on Conflict, Memory & the Human Condition

  1. Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (1960)
    Dedicated "to the victims of fascism and war," this work is heavily autobiographical, quoting Shostakovich's own DSCH musical motif to reflect individual suffering under oppression.

  2. Béla Bartók – String Quartet No. 4, Sz. 91 (1928)
    While not explicitly programmatic of war, its "night music" and aggressive motoric rhythms are widely interpreted as a reflection of the pervasive anxiety in interwar Europe.

  3. Benjamin Britten – String Quartet No. 2 in C major, Op. 36 (1945)Composed to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Henry Purcell's death, it includes a massive Chacony (a tribute to Purcell) that scholars often interpret as a "purging" of the poisons of fascism.

  4. Arnold Schoenberg – String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 10 (1908)Famous for the line "I feel the air of another planet," this work’s departure into atonality and its inclusion of a soprano voice mirrored the crumbling of traditional European societal structures.

  5. György Ligeti – String Quartet No. 1, Métamorphoses nocturnes (1953–54)
    Written in Stalinist Hungary before Ligeti’s escape to the West, it captures a restless, claustrophobic atmosphere.

  6. Walter Piston – String Quartet No. 3 (1947)
    It is a cornerstone of American neoclassicism, written in the immediate wake of World War II.

  7. Elliott Carter – String Quartet No. 2 (1959)
    This work treats the four instruments as distinct "personalities" in conflict, a metaphor for the individual's struggle for identity during the Cold War.

  8. Philip Glass – String Quartet No. 3, Mishima (1985)Extracted from his film score for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, it provides a rhythmic, contemplative study of the Japanese writer's obsession with military discipline and ritual suicide.

  9. Alfred Schnittke – String Quartet No. 3 (1983)A landmark of "polystylism," it quotes Beethoven, Lassus, and Shostakovich to represent the fractured cultural memory of the late Soviet era.

  10. Krzysztof Penderecki – String Quartet No. 2 (1968)
    A radical avant-garde work using clusters and extended techniques to evoke intense sonic friction.

  11. Sofia Gubaidulina – String Quartet No. 4 (1993)
    It utilizes pre-recorded tape and colored lights to create a spiritual, existential dialogue.

  12. George Crumb – Black Angels (1970)
    Subtitled "Thirteen Images from the Dark Land," this electric string quartet is the definitive musical response to the Vietnam War, featuring "god-music" and "night-sounds."

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