String Quartet played by the Blech String Quartet
Herbert Murrill, who was born in London in 1909 and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Oxford' University, where he took the Bachelor of Music degree, has already distinguished himself with a number of striking compositions, including a Cello Concerto and Three Hornpipes for orchestra. He has also written incidental music to plays, such as Auden's Dance of Death and The Dog beneath the Skin and Priestley's Music by Sight. His String Quartet, which was composed shortly before the war, is modern in idiom but classical in form. It is full of vitality, and in the finale the rhythms are borrowed from jazz.