The parts to Jonathan Harvey's String Quartet No. 3.

Harvey’s String Quartet No.3 was written for his longstanding collaborators the Arditti Quartet. Composed in 1995, it sees whisps of material appear and disappear, especially as microtones and shadowy harmonics. “It is as if the normal solid string tone is put under a microscope” Harvey writes of the 16-minute piece, “or a solid beam of light is diffracted…and scattered.” Harvey calls for unusual sonorities: players breathe audibly; the cello uses a scordatura tuning. A skittering, dance-like finale concludes the piece, with the players striking their strings col legno. This product comprises the instrumental parts.

“[Harvey] writes a ghostly insubstantial music, with ethereal fragments that seem to be just at the point of materialising but never do. This really does sound like music from another world, and a very haunting one.”
LA Times (Mark Swed), 25 March 1998