# Stefans Grové: String quartet (1945)



## vlncto (Nov 26, 2012)

*Stefans Grové (1922-2014)* was a South African composer and one of the "fathers" and main figures in the development of Western art music in South Africa. Among his very first compositions is a *String quartet (1945)*. I recently found a fair copy of the autograph score. The only other existing manuscript - the working copy - is archived at the Stellenbosch University. With the permission from the Grové family I am now proud to present the typeset full score at my website. There it can be downloaded free of charge and a sound snippet is included:

*https://www.tobias-broeker.de/rare-manuscripts/other-violin-manuscripts/quartet-works/*

You are welcome to visit my site and download your own copy of the score.

A short biography of Stefans Grové:

Stefans Grové was born on 23 July 1922 in Bethlehem (South Africa). His mother worked as a music teacher, his uncle the well-known composer D. J. Roode and so he learned to play the piano, organ and flute from an early age. In 1945 Stefans Grové began to study music at the South African College of Music in Cape Town with William Henry Bell and Erik Chisholm. Later he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship as the first South African ever and so completed his master's degree at the Harvard University under Thurston Dart and Walter Piston. He also attended Aaron Copland's composition class at the Tanglewood Summer School and studied flute at the Longy School of Music.
After his studies Stefans Grové worked as a teacher first at the Bard College and then at the Peabody Institute. He returned permantly to South Africa in 1972 and was appointed lecturer at the University of Pretoria. There he remained until his death on 29 May 2014.

Stefans Grové is one of the most significant and important composers in the history of South Africa. Together with Arnold van Wyk and Hubert du Plessis he is considered as "the fathers of South African art music". He also was the first white composer to include African musical language into his compositions and forming a hybrid of "white Western" and "black South African" styles.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Rather to my frustration, very little of South African composers' music is at all available in recording or on YouTube. Peter Klatzow has a YouTube channel, and I notice he has begun to make a lot of recordings of his own music available now. But most of the music of Grové and Van Wyk is all but unavailable; local music stores generally don't stock it, and it seems most of it is out of print and will remain that way. In the meantime the copyright holders will probably frustrate every effort to put it on YouTube.


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## vlncto (Nov 26, 2012)

Thanks for your comment and I understand your frustration. It took me quite some efforts to get recordings of most of the South African violin concertos (my main research focus). But with my free (!) publication of the score it is now up to a string quartet to bring this interesting piece on stage. So spread the word and hopefully in the near future another South African work can be listened to.


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