Frank Denyer

Five Muted Quartets brings together Frank Denyer's String Quartets No. 2 to No. 6, written between 2017 and 2025 and played by the Luna Quartet: Janneke van Prooijen and Jellantsje de Vries on violins, Elisabeth Smalt on viola and Katharina Gross on cello, with Diamanda Dramm as second violin in No. 2. Each quartet is a single movement, and Denyer wants them heard one after another, in the order they were composed.

The scores ask for heavy practice mutes, and Denyer's booklet note explains why. He wants the four players in the listener's room, at the level of an easy conversation, addressing one person rather than a hall. In his account chamber music lost that intimacy when it moved from private houses to public spaces and instruments were rebuilt to be louder. A recording is one way to recover it. Live, he prefers small rooms where a few people sit close to the musicians and on the same level.

The string sound is altered in other ways too. A metal buzzer rasps on some notes of the cello in No. 3 and of the viola in No. 6, starting with its very first note. In No. 3 each player has about twenty pairs of small pellet bells, and two of them tap blocks of hardwood with the heel of the bow. No. 4 adds a tap-dancer's shoe on a stone tile, struck metal, a cigar box and a slap on the thigh, and at its climax other people join in. Throughout, the players sometimes sing a note as they play it, or instead of it.

The music is microtonal across the cycle. In No. 6 the viola's D string is tuned 40 cents sharp, which steadies some of the microtones and gives the ear a recurring reference. Quartet No. 2 first appeared on The Boundaries of Intimacy, Denyer's earlier Another Timbre collection of chamber works.

Quartet No. 2 recorded in May 2018 at Splendor, Amsterdam, Nos. 3 to 6 in February 2026 at Robert Bosch Geluid, Amsterdam, all by Robert Bosch. Booklet notes by Frank Denyer. Cover artwork: detail from Embody, a painting by Finlan Whelan.