String quartet in three parts

2015-16: DeLand, Florida

ca. 15 minutes

String Quartet

Movements I and II premiered by the Brown String Quartet at Stetson University in March 2017.

Movement II is dedicated to the memory of Ethan Fredrick Greene.

This quartet began life as a small collection of piano solos that each featured a collection of 4 pitches. If played all together, the performer would have completed the chromatic scale by the end of the collection. The idea to turn this into a string quartet began with a performance of the opening movement on piano. I began to hear the sound in my head with a more cello-like timbre and wanted to expand on that. Over the course of the composition period, each movement began to increase in length and I found the need to include occasional modulations and changes to the pitches in order to maintain interest; 5 minutes of a G minor chord with an occasional flat 5th is not super exciting to my ear. 

The first movement, Broken Engine, is a piece that could be performed by itself or with any of the other two movements. The concept for this version is a conflict between the four performers. Each one tries to take over the ensemble and take control, ultimately destroying the melodic contour of the piece until they come together and work to create the final melody as it gets moved around in canon between the voices.

Movement II picks up immediately from the end of Broken Engine with a static, somber texture that continues for the first half of the piece. It is as if a sudden tragedy has rendered the ensemble speechless and they are unsure of how to proceed. This continues until a sudden change in texture pulls the ensemble into a more active series of melodic ideas. This new texture is happy almost to the point of being cheesy and contrived, almost as if the ensemble is faking it in order to get past the grief they were just exposed to.

Movement III is a fast, energetic marathon of almost constant motion. The continuous 8th and 16th note runs elicit a sense of urgency and panic that, compared from the previously heard material, seems to come from nowhere. The fast tempo and changing emphasis of the beat puts a strain on the musicians as they work to keep up with each other and reach the end of the composition.

The complete score is available here.

The score to just the first movement, Broken Engine is available here.