String Quartet in Five Movements 2013
date completed
2013
duration
25'
instrumentation
string quartet
commission
Spoleto Festival USA for St. Lawrence String Quartet
premiere
June 2014 in Spoleto, SC
I - fluid
II - quiet, rocking
III - quiet, austere
IV - fluid
V - metronomic, brittle
Program Note by Samuel Adams
About two months prior to starting work on
this quartet, I read a series of lectures by the Italian author Italo Calvino on the topic of lightness in poetry. An idea of his that stuck—and one that was very important for me to understand at the time—is that art need not indulge
in the weight of the world to be serious. Rather,
art can deflect its weight without necessarily
evading its presence.
Calvino wrote: “The only hero able to cut
off Medusa’s head is Perseus, who flies with
winged sandals; Perseus, who does not turn his
gaze upon the face of the Gorgon but only
upon her image reflected in his bronze shield... Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like
Perseus into a different space. I don’t mean
escaping into dreams or into the irrational.
I mean that I have to change my approach, look
at the world from a different perspective”
(Calvino, from “Six Memos for the Next
Millennium”).
I found this image striking and meaningful—timely, too, since it provided an approach
to writing my first string quartet (a daunting
task!). It also seemed appropriate given the
character of St. Lawrence: a very serious
group of musicians who do not take themselves
too seriously.
So, this string quartet is a kind of thought experiment, one that takes inspiration from
Calvino’s stance. And although it references its
historical predecessors (Joseph Haydn, John
Cage, Helmut Lachenmann) through allusion
and quotation, it does so as Perseus might have:
with winged feet. The five movements function
independently, and only occasionally to they directly refer to one another.
The first movement, fluid is constructed of
a series of winding melodies and out-of-context cadences. The music is gentle and to be played
without vibrato or heavy bow pressure.
The second and most substantial movement
is a pastorale that moves at varying degrees of
slowness: first slow, then slower, then so slow
that the music almost seems to fray at the edges.
A stratospheric minuet, rewritten in 5/8 for the
two violins, surfaces about a third of the way
through.
An intermezzo lasting only two minutes, the
third movement takes its material from Haydn’s
String Quartet Op. 20, No. 5, which is only
openly revealed in its last gesture.
The fourth movement is very fast and slightly
irreverent, built of quickly alternating harmonics that transform asthe players gradually move
towards (and away from) the bridges of their
instruments. The last gesture we hear is the
quiet, distant sound of white noise.
The fifth and final movement is a fractured,
distorted hymn that has no source and departs
not via cadence but via disintegration.
String Quartet in Five Movements is dedicated to the St. Lawrence String Quartet.
- Samuel Adams
(click outside to close)
press
"...this is a significant work, overall, confident in its craftsmanship, evocative with its diaphanous textures, its long-lined spaciousness, its use of space and silence as essential materials. Quietly powerful and with its own vocabulary (i.e. no pulsing minimalism), it focuses the listener: The finale, “Hymn, Vanishing,” seems to arrive from some mysterious epoch."
San Jose Mercury News ↗
"This quartet is a work of considerable variety, and not just because of the historical references. The very texture of the sound changes moment by moment, with constant shifts in voicing, vibrato, harmonics, pizzicato, bowing on the bridge, and other techniques. Adams has a knack for creating stillness in his music by slowing down the harmonic rhythm and giving the players beautiful harmonies to sit with. One movement has the word “austere” in its title, but it’s not the only movement to have a certain reserved fragility about it. Bartók, who Adams didn’t mention, might be one the spiritual fathers of this lovely quartet. The SLSQ, to whom the work is dedicated, played with their customary flair and focus, delicately or robustly as needed, vanquishing any thoughts that they might be playing at less than their typical level of accomplishment."
SF Classical Voice ↗