NOTES
STRINGWARE a été composé pour mon récital de DMA à la Yale School of Music, en hommage au Divertimento de Bartók et à son Cinquième Quatuor à cordes. The work originally comprised five movements. Since then, the first and last — swerve and swank — have each doubled in length and transformed into independent works: Vers le bleu | Vers le rouge for string quartet, and Talaria for wind ensemble. Il n'en subsiste aujourd'hui que les trois mouvements centraux : deux adagios et un scherzo.
SWOON (7')
The first adagio opens with a high, soft floating sound that travels through increasingly lyrical episodes toward a highly emotional ending. The entire piece is built from canons — three-voice, six-voice, harmonized — including the livelier central section, which sits above an accompaniment also derived from canonic manipulations. The last part is an inverted retrograde of the opening. Crescendos and accents that emerge forcefully through the generally soft texture lend the piece a surprisingly powerful emotional impact.
SWITCH (7')
The original core of the cycle, a more or less palindromic scherzo. The quasi-folk quality of the theme and its constant repetition contribute to the ritualistic character of the piece. Built from small cells repeated and imitated in various permutations, it follows an additive trajectory, building to a three-voice canon in the violins floating above a two-voice canon in the lower strings. This dies out, then restarts with similar techniques toward a second, more violent climax, after which the first third of the piece unfolds in retrograde.
SWELL (8'30")
The second adagio shares its theme with swoon, but is altogether more ghostlike — another interpretation of regret, of loss. In successive waves, the theme searches for itself and hardly does, losing itself instead in suspended moods, whispered or thunderous. After a nostalgic viola solo threatened by the low strings, the piece ends with a new canon, followed by a ghostly sarabande that vanishes into the high register and then silence.
Enregistrement
Détails
Instrumentation
7 cordes ou orchestre à cordes
Mouvements
I. swoon (7')
II. switch (7')
III. swell (8'30")
Durée
23'
Date
1996
Partition
Disponible sur demande
Composé pour
DMA recital
Yale School of Music
Première
Yale University
New Haven (Connecticut), novembre 1997
Exécutions sélectionnées
Banff Centre for the Arts
Canada, décembre 1998