SMALL CHAMBER ENSEMBLE - String Quartet #2 / SONGS OF NAMELESS ANCESTORS (2023)
Duration - 16:00
2 violin, viola, violoncello
Score & Parts Rental
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Program Notes
My second string quartet is dedicated to the Ying Quartet and was commissioned as part of the Eastman School of Music's centenary. The title arises from a phrase in Joseph Roth's novel The Radetzky March, in which the protagonist Captain Trotta's tempestuous dreams “dawned in his soul unknown songs of nameless ancestors.” Similarly, many of the musical ideas contained in the piece came to me during restless sleep. The primary melodic force is the mordent (from mordere, "to bite"), a short up-and-down trill figuration used in Baroque and Renaissance music, as well as in many vernacular traditions. The mordent’s oscillating, stepwise shape and salutatory gesture also serve as a formal basis for the work’s one continuous movement. — Derek Bermel