Contemporary Classics May 22, 2018 Contemporary String Quartet inspired by the JACK Quartet

This episode of Contemporary Classics is inspired by the first hearing live the JACK Quartet.  They are the preeminent group who is exploring the cutting edge of contemporary music for the string quartet.

Jeremy Gill - "Capriccio"

Tonight we are openng with Part 1 of the larger work for string quartet called Capriccio.  This part has 15 short movements entitled

1. Arsis

2. Misterium tremendum (sonata da chiesa)

3. Up, down

4. La chitarra

5. Tip, balance, frog; wood

6. Heterophonic/homophonic interlude

7. Colors: normal, fingerboard, bridge

8. Nodes

9. Two at once

10. Eros

11. Up, up…, down, down…

12. Pressure

13. Monophonic interlude

14. Normal, mute, mute

15. Across the strings

Leos Janácek's "Intimate Letters" (Quartet no. 2)

Leos Janácek's "Intimate Letters" (Quartet no. 2) is based on letters to his muse, Kamila Stösslová. We are the fortunate beneficiaries of Janácek s unrequited passion! This passionate piece also plays a key role in the Daniel-Day Lewis film, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Janácek’s 2nd String Quartet, “Intimate Letters”, is regarded as a highlight of the modern string quartet literature. It was written during the composer’s last year of life, between 29 January and 19 February 1928, inspired by the ageing Janácek’s exceptional love for Kamila Stösslová. The Moravian Quartet devoted themselves to this impressive work; Janácek attended a total of three of their rehearsals in May and June 1928. This had several consequences, including his abandoning his original idea of using a viola d’amore with its part done entirely by the viola which is to reflect Kamila.  The première of the work took place on 11 September 1928, a month after Janáček died and was performed by Moravian Quartet.  The work is essentially tonal albeit not in the traditional sense. For example, the work closes with six D-flat major chords (Janáček's favourite chord), but with the added dissonance of an E-flat.

John Luther Adams's "Everything that Rises"

We close with the JACK Quartet's performance of John Luther Adams's "Everything that Rises".  "Everything That Rises", commissioned by SFJAZZ and the JACK Quartet, is an ever-in-motion virtuosic just-intonation work built of a series of 16 ascending musical “clouds.” Its pitches are derived from the harmonics of the piece’s subsonic fundamental tone.  Adams writes "Everything That Rises, my fourth string quartet, grew out of Sila: The Breath of the World—a concert-length choral/orchestral work I composed on a rising series of 16 harmonic clouds. This music traverses that same territory, but in a much more melodic way. Each musician is a soloist, playing throughout. Time floats and the lines spin out, always rising, in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiral upward…until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows, sighing."