Anna Meredith wrote this very short string quartet in 2013 for the Maxwell Quartet, who gave the first performance at Inverness Town House on 26 September 2013. According to her own note on the work, ‘it was written as a partner piece to Songs for the M8 [a quartet from 2005] and when I was thinking about writing it, I found myself looking back to the same (grungy, teenagery 1990s) time.’ Founded in 1989, Teenage Fanclub are a Scottish alternative rock band and Meredith was an enthusiastic fan in the 1990s. A Short Tribute does not involve any quotation but as Meredith explains: ‘I didn’t want to take any material directly from the band but have worked with layering scaley step lines and rotating chords, and keeping the texture pizzicato throughout.’ 

© Nigel Simeone