Little Music for Strings

This work was commissioned for the 1963 Lucerne Festival and was first performed there in August by the Lucerne Festival Strings directed by Rudolf Baumgartner. It is in two movements.

The first movement is a set of six variations on a short recitative which is played at the beginning. Each variation is repeated twice. This movement is closely linked in character and technical vocabulary to the 19 chorale variations which form the second movement of my Little Symphony, Op. 15. The movement is written against a background metre of 4 + 3 which may be
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more readily appreciated in the variations themselves than in the recitative theme.

The second movement, allegro moderato, is vaguely related formally to the principle of the rondo. Before the coda, the recitative of the first movement is reworked in a new harmonisation.

Alexander Goehr