String Quartet

Abstract

The motivating idea behind this string quartet was to examine the extent to which a given contour—in this quartet, a curve abstracted from a short melodic line—could structure a piece of music at every level of its organization. This contour appears as a melodic line in the cello at the conclusion of the quartet, but is also amplified and projected across the duration of the piece as a structural curve that controls the degree to which the intervals and rhythmic values of the local material (itself consisting of variants of this melodic contour) are either amplified or condensed. In moments defined by the highest point of the larger curve, this treatment produces melodic lines that move at a glacially slow pace and within a narrow range, and hence their melodic nature is minimized; at the lowest point of the larger curve the rhythmic values contract and the interval content expands, exaggerating the original curve. The task of the piece then becomes one of negotiating the shifting, often fragmented musical terrain produced by the structure, and working against (or in some cases with) this larger curve to arrive at a point of stability, at which the melodic source can finally be presented fully in its original form.