Line of Wreckage [2005]

for string quartet

duration :: 5’

First performance :: Arditti Quartet — Centre Acanthes (Metz, France), 18 July 2005

[ Arditti Quartet :: Centre Acanthes (Metz, France), 18 July 2005 ]

Line of Wreckage (the title is from a “non-site” artwork by the American land artist Robert Smithson) takes as its postulates a number of extremely limiting factors, several of which were chosen specifically to counteract intuitive tendencies in my own recent work.  Most obviously, the hair of the players’ bows is loosened and as little rosin applied as possible, greatly compromising the dynamic and timbral range of the ensemble (and highlighting those actions, including col legno bowing, pizzicati, col legno battuto, etc. where the bowhair is not used); other restrictions, aimed against my own habits, include the stipulation that there is to be no silence in the music, a bias towards locally regular rhythmic impulses and “open” intervals, and an emphasis on repeated notes.  In other ways, continuing interests of mine are manifest: an insistence on physical awkwardness and instability, a pronounced disconnect between the performers’ physical exertion and the sonic result, and the fundamental importance of proportional duration structures that have the potential to frustrate the local materials’ ability to fill them.