String Quartet no. 2 "Current" 2019
date completed
2019
duration
29'
scored for
string quartet and resonating snare drums
required tech
4sn.dr.,2amps, 2 speaker cones, 2 transdcrs.
commission
Cal Performances for Spektral Quartet
premiere
April 2022 in Berkeley, CA
I - fast, noise (rallentando)
II - fast, quiet, building (for Chris Stark)
III - quiet, patient
IV - fast noisy (ritornello)
V - quiet, pulsing (for Ingram Marshall)
Program Note by Samuel Adams
This project began in 2016 when Spektral Quartet asked me for a short work. The quiet, episodic 12-minute study, Quartet Movement, though a work that stands on its own, felt like the seed of a much larger musical experiment. Since them, I have been gradually expanding the material and sound design to create a string quartet with a broader emotional and technical range.
The crux of the piece is the relationship between the minimal digital language of the resonating snare drums and the warm, acoustic complexity of the string quartet. Throughout the five movements, the string quartet aligns to the fixity of the digital sound in different ways: in time for movements 1, 2, 4 and 5, and in pitch for movement 3.
The result is a virtuosic display of four individuals performing with artificial, indifferent musical elements. Together, a complex polyphonic musical organism emerges; the voices of the quartet are rarely placed in a hierarchy in relation to one another or in relation to the snare drums.
Repetitions are heard on every level, from large-scale formal refrains to the hammered chords in movements 1 and 4; from the granular, strobe-like sounds in the second movement to the gently rocking cadences, tuned to the frequency of waves lapping the shore, that end the work.
The title Current seemed appropriate both for its reference to the electric currents that activate the resonating snare drums as well as the intense, weather-blasted quality of the work’s sound world.
This work was co-commissioned by Spektral Quartet and Cal Performances, with additional assistance from New Music USA. The work in its entirety will premiere on April 5, 2020 in Berkeley, CA as part of Cal Performances. It is dedicated with utmost affection to Spektral Quartet.
-Samuel Adams
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press
It’s temptingly easy to imagine that acoustic and electronic music occupy distinct spheres, with different rules and aesthetic guidelines. In reality, though, the two have always enjoyed a loose affiliation, and composers can mix the two creative resources as freely as a painter mixes hues on a palette.
Samuel Adams’ engrossing String Quartet No. 2, which had its world premiere in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall on Sunday, Feb. 13, during a recital by the Spektral Quartet, makes this point with notable dexterity. In addition to the four traditional string instruments, Adams includes four snare drums, sitting directly on the stage, with small speakers on them that can be activated by one of the performers. When that happens, the drumheads emit a delicate ghostly whoosh, like wind over water. It’s a semi-familiar sound — you’ve heard snare drums make it before, but never without the percussive attack of drumsticks — and it creates a simultaneous sense of strangeness and comfort.
Yet what emerged even more strikingly during Sunday’s recital — presented by Cal Performances, which co-commissioned the half-hour work — was how lightly Adams interweaves this effect into the musical tapestry. It’s a color, and a vivid one; it’s not a structural element.
For the most part, Adams’ piece, which runs just under half an hour, is a superbly inviting meditation on our old friends harmony, rhythm and rhetoric. Adams is an increasingly familiar figure to Bay Area audiences — a Berkeley native, the son of composer John Adams — and this quartet seemed to represent a powerfully precise convergence of ambition and means.
Two of its five movements (the first and fourth) are concise and single-minded, like palate cleansers before and between the courses of the meal. They consist of sharply attacked string chords, repeated over and over while the snare drums contribute a clattery aura.
Each of these serves as the curtain-raiser to a more expansive stretch of writing. In the second movement, Adams creates a field of shimmering, shifting chords made up of multiple small repetitions. The textures that emerge are simultaneously static and in constant motion, like atoms in a volume of gas (here Adams draws a bit on the techniques of “micropolyphony” associated with the modernist composer György Ligeti). The finale uses rhythmic repetitions to approach similar material from a different direction.
Yet the most directly expressive part of the quartet — its human essence, perhaps — is in the quiet central movement. The movement is built around a poignant and beautiful melodic gesture, a sort of gentle call to attention, that recurs at key junctures throughout the movement. “Listen to this,” it says in a way that is simultaneously peremptory and loving, before continuing to pursue the musical discourse. It’s a deeply touching passage in the midst of a compelling creation.
The Spektral Quartet — which consist of violinists Clara Lyon and Maeve Feinberg, violist Doyle Armbrust, and cellist Russell Rolen — have been involved with the piece since its inception (it was supposed to premiere in 2020, but COVID intervened). The ensemble gave it a focused and clearly committed reading, balancing delicacy and fervor in splendid proportion.
San Francisco Chronicle ↗
