String Quartet No. 2 (2020)
String Quartet
Duration: c. 30 mins.
Written during the initial stages of the unfolding COVID pandemic, the music is structured in four movements, with each movement a meditation on, or reflection of, the sense of isolation and melancholia that fell in its wake. The musical material is tightly controlled, beginning with the opening passage of the first movement. Central motives appear throughout the work in various transformations, with passages often held in stasis through canons in inversion and ostinati figures. The third movement is the most active with a prevalent scherzando feel, frequently interrupted by lyrical solo lines and tutti chordal passages. The final movement synthesizes the material of the preceding movements into a new context, gradually losing energy until ascending in the final passage of harmonics, concluding on a note of quiet hope.
String Quartet No. 2—Premiere Performance by the Arneis String Quartet
St. Paul’s Church (Brookline, Massachusetts)—21 May, 2022
Dave Jamrog Audio/Video—Boston, MassachusettsString Quartet No. 1, “pale reflections…” (1999)
String Quartet
Duration: c. 7 mins.
Evocative rather than descriptive, the programmatic titles of the three movements of this string quartet were added after the work’s completion. While rigorously organized, the work strives for a spontaneity and directness of musical expression associated with works based on the application of a less-structured musical language, constantly reinterpreting a small core of material in, metaphorically, different light. The brief and aphoristic first movement alternates between long sinuous lines and fleeting pizzicato gestures. The second movement further develops this material, juxtaposing it in expansive aural plains that transition from dense counterpoint to sparse isolation, ending on a thick repeated double-stop chord in the upper voices. Offset in time from the cello, each restatement of the chord comes closer in time to the cello, until eventually becoming one. The final movement bathes the material in the effervescence of shimmering ponticello tremolos and harmonics.
Arneis String Quartet
CENTAUR RECORDS | CRC 3483Piano Quintet (1991)
String quartet and piano
Duration: c. 20 mins.
The harmonic/melodic structure, as well as the respective internal structure of the three movements, is based on the well-known “B–A–C–H” motif that Webern used in the Streichquartett, Op. 28. The texture is highly contrapuntal—though bearing a more immediate resemblance to the choral motets and masses of Palestrina than the contrapuntal music of Bach himself. The rhythmic content of the music is highly restrained, employing palindromic structures in large blocks of fixed registration. The music is soft throughout, focusing the listener’s attention on the smallest level of detail, magnifying small contrasts to a high level of importance. The first movement consists of densely textured contrapuntal sections, juxtaposing blocks for full ensemble with rhapsodic interruptions of block chords by solo piano, fusing the material together by the end of the movement. The second movement utilizes pizzicato strings throughout, creating a much-needed contrast to the heavier outer movements. The light texture of the movement is interrupted, again by solo piano, with sections of a sustained bell-like quality. The final movement further develops material from the previous movements, melding the dense counterpoint and block chordal ideas of the first movement with the bell-like material of the second movement.
Arneis String Quartet | Victor Cayres, piano
CENTAUR RECORDS | CRC 3483