String Quartet No. 1 (2004)

Duration: 21:00 minutes

Instrumentation: 2 violins, viola, cello

Premiere: March 13, 2005 at the University of Cincinnati by Nicholas Naegele and Isaac Thompson, violins, Nicholas Jeffery, viola and Andrea Kleesattel, cello

Notes:

My first string quartet is a dramatic work in three movements, with all the material derived from the open strings of the instruments. The Prelude opens with a simple drone and fragments of music that is used throughout the piece. The Scene-Recitative alternates between violence and tenderness before an expressive and plaintive cello solo. The Finale makes the most obvious use of the open strings, inspired by a few lines from Wallace Stevens’ Of Modern Poetry:

The actor is
   A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
   An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
   Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
   Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
   Beyond which it has no will to rise.