Back to my String Quartet

It's been too long since I last paid any attention to my string quartet. When I write this fifth and final movement, it will be time to go back and revise all the movements, then find a quartet to play it. Perhaps by this summer?

When I started composition lessons in Chicago, my teacher had me write a narrative about what my first piece was going to sound like. Of course, it ended up not following that, but it gave me a starting place. Today I wrote a narrative for Tenaya, the lake in Yosemite high country that we love. We'll see how the music ends up reflecting these thoughts and plans....

"For Tenaya, I represent the light reflecting off of the lake in a shimmer as the wind stirs the surface. As the wind is not constant, and also tends to get stronger in the afternoon, the sparkles adjust accordingly.

The two violins and the viola/cello play interlocking melodies as in gamelan music, but using the dreamlike C Lydian mode from the first movement - the Valley - making a frame for the entire work.

In listening to the phasing technique of Steve Reich’s music, the interlocking melodies play in canon, and then play in a simple phase where one group plays the first bar of the melody twice while the other plays the melody as originally written, making the canon sound different at each iteration, finally coming together at the end.

I will start with fragments of the melodies framed in bursts of silence, and flashes of color with harmonics and pizzicato for a variety of texture. The tendency of a string quartet is to sound the same from beginning to end, whether fast or slow, energetic or contemplative. I explore other textures."