Tower: Incandescent For String Quartet

Category: String Quartet; Two Violins, Viola, and Cello ** Title: Incandescent ** Composer: Joan Tower ** Score and Parts ** Publisher: Associated Music Publishers Edition ** Difficulty: A6.

Incandescent is American composer Joan Tower's third work for the string quartet medium. It was written for and dedicated to the Emerson Quartet, who gave the premiere performance in 2003.

Of the ideas behind the work, the composer writes: "The word incandescent is not one that I would usually include in a title because it seems to be more poetic than what I am thinking about...What I try to do in my music, and particularly in this piece, is create a heat from within, so that what unfolds is not only motivated by the architecture of the piece (which I consider the most important goal), but also that each idea or phrase contains a strong radiance of texture and feeling about it." (from the Introduction to this edition)