String Quartet No. 2

String Quartet No. 2 begins and ends with musical ideas that were in the back of my mind in some form or other since my teens. In the process of moving house during 2020 I rediscovered some old minidiscs containing rough demo recordings I’d made nearly two decades before. At that point I didn’t yet know how to realise these ideas, but listening back much later I found the seeds of what has now developed into the two outer movements of the piece. Between them come the flowing interwoven patterns of the second movement and the slow third movement, which is a lament.

I think of this quartet as one of the most concentrated, personal and intimate pieces I have written. It is an outcome of my enduring need to communicate something that I’m incapable of fully expressing with words. I would if I could. I know that it has something to do with love.

© Edmund Finnis