26 Feb 2007
Tags: , , ,

Pre­mière of Four Stills on Evap­o­ra­tion.

Time, Studio A, Warren Lecture Hall
University of California, San Diego
San Diego, CA, USA
Instru­men­ta­tion: string quartet
Dura­tion: 8’00
Writ­ten for the Arditti Quartet
mp3 listen to Four Stills on Evaporation (excerpt)
Per­form­ers: The Arditti Quartet
Pro­gramme Note

This piece reflects my ongo­ing inter­ests in sec­tional forms, doing away with tran­si­tional mate­r­ial, and the chal­leng­ing of aes­thetic assump­tions. There is no attempt to relate any of the mate­ri­als of the piece over the large scale. Instead, I have focused on a broad ges­ture—that of a long dimin­u­endo—that goes from begin­ning to end. Within that ges­ture are a series of thirty-one frag­ments, some with local rela­tion­ships to adjoin­ing frag­ments, some with­out. No struc­tures or orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples have been used that are not imme­di­ately appar­ent to the ear, and each sec­tion is com­posed intu­itively with regard to pitch, rhythm, tone colour, and phras­ing. The piece also includes sev­eral the­atri­cal ele­ments, and is there­fore best appre­ci­ated in a live performance.

Too much to do! There’s been a lot going on, and I haven’t had time to post any of it here. Check back soon for more.