Four works by Jay Schwartz for string orchestra, six voices, twelve cellos and string quintet, all recorded live between 2005 and 2008. Schott describes music built on the physics of sound: the overtone spectrum, microtonality and glissandi, unfolding in clear, deliberately prolonged forms with a frank emotional pull.

Schwartz is an American composer, born in San Diego in 1965 and living in Cologne. He studied piano and composition at Arizona State University and musicology in Tübingen, and from 1992 to 1995 assisted with incidental music at the Staatstheater Stuttgart. In 2000 he won the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Composition Prize of the city of Cologne, and he has three times received the Heinrich Strobel Foundation's electronic music scholarship from the SWR. Music for Orchestra was recorded live by the hr-Sinfonieorchester under Diego Masson on 10 June 2005 at the Sendesaal of Hessischer Rundfunk, Frankfurt. The Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart recorded Music for Six Voices at the SWR Funkstudio in Stuttgart on 4 March 2008. The cellists of the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR recorded Music for 12 Cellos there under Erik Nielsen in November 2007. The Kairos Quartett and the double bassist Matthias Bauer recorded Music for Five Stringed Instruments in Berlin in February 2008.

Each piece keeps to a homogeneous group of instruments, which Schott ties to Schwartz's ideals of clarity, simplicity and organic sound. Music for Orchestra, for strings alone, lasts nearly nineteen minutes. Music for Six Voices applies the same thinking to a vocal ensemble. In Music for 12 Cellos and Music for Five Stringed Instruments, string quartet plus double bass, glissandi and overtones are spread across a single family of instruments. The forms are long and coherent, producing a persistent metamorphosis and a conscious dramatic plan.

Schwartz uses tonality in the context of the physics of organic harmony. Schott stresses that he does so in a poetic way, with a captivating sensuous pull and an unabashed emotional disposition. Music for Orchestra of 2005 later became the first of a numbered series, which by 2024 had reached its ninth part. His publisher is Universal Edition, which lists the hr-Sinfonieorchester, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Kairos Quartett among his regular performers.

SACD (multichannel and stereo), Wergo WER 6572 2, released in 2009 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik. Total time 69:12.