SKU: PR.16400272S

UPC: 680160588442. 8.5 x 11 inches.

My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change.   I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]   The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla.   Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional.   II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts]   This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture.   This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream.   III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts]   The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this.   Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1.   String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.

SKU: PR.114405050

UPC: 680160008377. 11 x 14 inches.

Although structurally it subdivides into five movements, the entire quartet emerges as one vast continuum. There are no formal breaks between movements. However, certain musical signposts can be discerned, associated with each of the movements' terminations and new beginnings. The opening movement, The Nostalgia of Clanging Bell Sonorities, begins floating on recurrent Bbs whose soft rhythmic flow slowly puts into motion strong undercurrents suggestive of the latent power of water... After several suggestions of tolling bells, the movement gradually fades into hushed tones of veiled and very distant sonorities. It uses a unique efffect, for the first time in a musical context, conveyed through the use of extra heavy practice mutes. The second movement, The Spill of Water , disengages itself from the first through its distinct contrast in tempo. Water moves fast, and when it splashes, it tends to run wildly. In this case, it happens to be bubbly water that gushes forth bodly... smashing across rocky shorlines. So, too, the music attempts to conjure such moods. At the end of this movement, a cello cadenza emerges, introducing an introspective type of melodicism. The third movement, The Poignancy of Memory, contains many silences as it tries to convey memory through fragmented remembrances much like often occur in our dream state. Progressing through several slowly building images, it gradually works itself into juxtaposition of musical images. Towards the movement's end, high harmonics are sounding in all four instruments while left hand pizzicato notes in the cello pluch the last remembrances of this central core. Almost imperceptibly, the viola assumes leadership as it dissolves into: The fourth movement, The Fluidity of Motion, which has mostly the viola, but also the cello, articulating lyrical statements against the sheets of sound conjured up by the two violins playing a flood of swirling figures, evokes a kind of static motion in spae. Here, the virtually imperceptible manner in which this hushed whisper continues incessantly, can suggest the potential fluidity with which movement may inch forward... Later into the fourth movement , two fairly extended solos by the second and then the first violins, lead to a kind of spontaneous dialogue among the four instrumentalists. Eventually, this musical conversation gets caught up in: The fifth movement's The Rush of Time, which opens with a hushed flurry of speed, precipitates the Finale. It generates, at first slowly, but then very swiftly, whole shifts of rhythmic fields that initially seem to conflict with one another. Ultimately, this use of 'psycho-rhythmics contributes to an on-rush of motion and time. Rhythmic changes are, at times, abruptly precipitated with but little or no preparation creating a kind of inevitability in forward thrust, while the movement rushes forward with a feeling of gradual and continuous acceleration. It gathers density as more and more notes are piled progressively upon successive beats. The attempt is to spark tension and ignite excitement by means of frenetic confrontations of dissimilitudes. Ultimately - with the help of time - these polarities centrifically spin out their own destinies with their accompanying fall-out and own inevitable resolutions.

SKU: HL.49047454

UPC: 842819101086. 9.0x12.0x0.358 inches.

My 3rd String Quartet is in six contrasted movements. Certain musical figures recur across the work, but there are few themes as such. The main emphasis is on contrast of mood, texture, harmony, pacing and timing. Unlike many of my works this quartet had no extra-musical inspiration, and in principle should have no subtitle. Certain features already present in my music became more prominent in this new work: modes (limited collections of pitches) have always helped me to focus musical character, but here a sense of key note for each mode became much more pronounced, as did the difference between modes for each section of the work. A sort of hybrid key-system emerged (even with equivalents of major and minor) which is not normal tonality, nor does it aim to imitate it. Unlike tonality this key-system includes noises, extended performance techniques and intervals outside Western tuning as available resources. What I hope it does is to focus the listening experience onto different musical areas, to encourage a sense of both modulation from one area to another and to give the music a sense of goal. No conscious knowledge of this is needed when listening: the music should communicate directly on its own. Here, then, is this collection of six musical colours, related and unrelated, different yet belonging together, variable yet in a set order. Hence the subtitle, chosen both for both its sound and its sense: 'hana no hanataba' meaning, in Japanese, 'bouquet of flowers'. A brief description: 1) Moderately fast. Short droplets of sounds gather increasing momentum. 2) Very fast. Canons and bells at different speeds. 3) Very slow - fast - very slow - very fast - very slow. The main slow movement and its main scherzo. An emphasis on non-tempered tunings and on inhaling and exhaling waves of sound. The slow sections feature florid melodic writing. In the exuberant scherzo competing duos and trios create imaginary folk music. 4) Extremely fast/extremely slow. Open strings and harmonics fuse into a single string instrument - like a sort of large resonating Medieval tromba marina. 5) Very fast. A variation on movement 2). Variation, Schoenberg told Cage, is just a sort of repetition 'with some things changed and others not.' 6) Slow - Very Fast - Fast - Slow. The opening calm harmonies and florid melodies evoke movement 3) in different music. The fast part features one overt theme: a fanfare-like call to attention which is subject to extensive development. There is much use of non-Western tuning. At its climax the music freezes into a frieze - a wall of sound standing in front of the audience with increasing obstinacy and certainty as the work grinds towards its cadence.

SKU: FG.55011-510-1

ISBN 9790550115101.

Matthew Whittall's preface to Bright Ferment (2019): I have a complicated history with the string quartet. Actually, it's not that complicated. I spent months writing a huge one in my early twenties and hastily withdrew it after a long delayed premiere, vowing never to write another. In a typical case of karmic retribution, my fear of the form would eventually be overcome by the unrefusable offer to write the compulsory piece for the Banff International String Quartet Competition in my native Canada. The short duration requested, about nine minutes, also felt like a good way to wade gingerly back into the medium. The title was originally just a nice-sounding pair of words that surfaced in a brainstorming session with fellow composer Alex Freeman over an injudicious amount of fermented barley. When I looked it up later, I found that it was a phrase of older coinage, seemingly used more for poetic resonance than any fixed meaning. Ferment by itself denotes a state of confusion, change or lack of order. With bright, it takes on a more positive connotation with regard to society and creativity: a wild profusion of ideas barely checked by reason. (It may not actually mean that, but it describes this piece nicely, so let's go with it.) Fermentation in its trendy culinary usage is also hinted at via a recurrent percolating device of scattered pizzicati. As one may guess from the tone of this introduction, there is little attempt at gravity in Bright Ferment, the only means by which I felt I could sidestep the historical and expressive weight of the string quartet genre. Styles, gestures and moods are tossed around, cross-cut and abandoned in stream-of-consciousness fashion, connected by little except an intuitive sense of rightness in their juxtaposition. If the piece acquires depth in spite of me, it will only be because its disparate parts amplify and strengthen each other simply by being together - much like the ensemble itself. Bright Ferment was commissioned by the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with additional funding from the Americas Society (New York), for the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Duration: ca. 9 minutes.