Strings Quartet VII – Shapes In The Forest
In A Major
There were a couple of years between writing my sixth string quartet, the concerto grosso, and setting down to write this in 2021, the seventh, which is in a completely different style. Where the sixth was distinctly structured, the seventh is meandering, like the subject matter it was depicting: a walk in the woods as the sun is gradually setting.
The quartet carries a subtitle, Shapes In The Forest, and it was the shapes the sunlight makes in its constantly changing complex shadows under the tree canopy that inspired the music. The palette of dark and light includes long and short shadows, rippling and dappled shadows, waving, straight and intricate shadows. And whilst some of those dance with the wind, there is a slower and more deliberate change as the sun moves from one side of the forest to the other. The light and dark is in constant change from dawn to dusk, always moving. The things that live within it, hide and flitter from one safe place to the next as the patterns wave and weave.
Written in four movements, the piece is deliberately slow to evolve. This walk through the trees meanders as the light plays on the leaves and branches. The opening movement, When The Sunlight Filters Low Through The Trees, picks up the forest walk in the late afternoon, as dusk is approaching. All is calm.
The second movement, A Light Shower Across A Dew Pond, continues on from the first without pause. Our path has wandered through sunny glades and darker dells, and now happened across a modest water hole where the wild animals stop to drink. The gap in the trees allows a few drops of rain to reach the surface where they make great circles with tiny splashes. This isn’t quite the storm of Beethoven’s Pastoral – this is a small cloud passing over and giving us a light dusting of individual droplets so that we can make out each one landing on the pond. The shower is quickly done with.
Hidden well in this deep greenery, the wild things are waiting. One of them moves. Given the speed, it might be a young deer. The third movement, Catching Glimpse of Something Fast, hints at whatever it is flitting between trees, never still enough to see properly, its darting movements leaving a trail on the retina reassuring that the forest is full of life.
And The Sun Sets. Below the horizon of forest edge, it’s light and warmth are dissipating fast as the piece ends calming with the recapitulation of the first movement in a short fourth movement code.
String Quartet IX – Isola Di San Michele
In A Minor
On another return trip to the beautifully bonkers city of Venice, we aspired to see more of the bits we hadn’t seen on previous visits. Eschewing the Doge’s Palace and overpriced coffee in St Mark’s Piazza, we took the waterbus in search of Igor Stravinsky on the Isola Di San Michele, the funeral island in the middle of the Venetian lagoon.
It was a stiflingly hot day, still horribly muggy from a week of outrageously exciting storms every night, and it turned out to be a really good idea to leave the main drag of tourists behind in their overcrowded alleys and crumpled linen. San Michele was relatively cool with a slight breeze , shade from its massive ancient pines, and hardly any (living) souls.
What it did have was a few million cicadas. Whilst respectfully tromping around this unique and peaceful cemetery bumping in Diaghilev and Doppler, Ezra Pound, and or course Igor, the soundtrack to our visit was the persistent synchronised rhythmic chirruping of these invisible insects, whose collective volume in such a quiet place would have rivalled a landing jumbo. Sort of Steve Reich clapping on acid.
This piece was in my head before I’d got back to the hotel.
String Quartet I – Compact
In E Minor
Contrary to this appearing at first sight to be my first string quartet, it isn’t. There was of course an earlier first attempt at writing a string quartet which I had a few friends around to play one evening. They were suitably polite, and encouraging, but it’s never been allowed to see the light of day since. I think of it now as a stepping stone to my second, which the same friends came round to play. With more enthusiasm, they agreed that my writing had substantially developed and improved.
What we have on offer here is another String Quartet No I – written after the seventh, and re-numbered to fill in the unpublishable first attempt. I had set myself some deliberate boundaries in its creation in so much as: it was going to be short and relatively simple to play. I wanted to write something that a junior quartet could pick up and have a go at. Within that construct, I think re-using the name String Quartet No I is fully appropriate.
Its compact nature is therefore deliberate. Each of the three movements is very simple in form and quite consciously avoids the introduction of any detailed second theme or developmental sections which would compromise the intent.
An unexpected win with this concision has been that some of my audience, who “don’t like string quartets”, have found it to be perfectly acceptable. Everyone is invited to make their own mind up.
String Quartet II – Particle 45
In B Minor
My second string quartet is really the first one I was comfortable enough to put out there to be heard. I was genuinely moved when my friends and I played it through in my front room back in 2012, as this was the first time I’d had any of my serious work played by a group of proper musicians. Whilst the notes may have sounded just like the computer had when playing it through, the musicality added by four real musicians, even on first sight, was unparalleled and I was quietly blown away by what I had created.
Rather bizarrely, the piece is about sub-atomic particles. I’ve no idea why, but that’s where the inspiration came from.
The first movement is about an anonymous particle, maybe an electron, bounding around the tiny world that’s inside everything we’re made of. Free of the reality we perceive, it’s driven by different factors and forces – sometimes in sync with its neighbours, and sometimes just completely at random. There are a couple of really meaty tunes in this piece, and the feedback I’d had on other works from both my composition tutor, Noriko Shorney, and friends at my Orchestra, Redhill Sinfonia, was that it would good for me to be a bit more structured in my formatting and harmony. This would help the audience (and players) understand what was going on with all these random exciting thoughts that were appearing in my head. Being better is what drove me: two tunes and being careful to apply those most useful insights. It is nevertheless frantic and actually quite fun to play.
The second movement, Chromatographic Blooms, was described by Mikhail, whose quartet recorded this version in Brazil in 2023, as something really rather special, and I’m with him. I love what he did with it. My idea was driven by the idea of abstract flowers appearing through chromatography – you may remember dropping aqueous chemical solutions on filter paper at school and waiting to see them separate over time into beautiful patterns or blooms. Now imagine that on a sub-atomic scale amidst flowering fractals and you’re with me.
The final movement, Accelerator, puts that unnamed particle back into play and gets Igor to ramp up the generator to max to see what happens. Well, it gets excited, as particles do.
Players
String Quartets VII, IX and I performed by Kateryna Mytrofanova, Oleksiy Zavgorodniy, Anastasia Boyko and Jana Malentzova, under the direction of Oleh Mytrofanov. Recored in Ukraine in 2023.
String Quartet II performed by Mikhail Bugaev, Rodrigo De Olivera, and Robson Fonseca. Recorded in Brazil in 2023.
Mixing by Luca Zara.
Sheet Music
My String Quartets 1-9 are available to purchase as a single volume containing all separate parts; please enquire through Bandlab. A copy is also available to hire from NewSPAL – New Surrey Performing Arts Library,
Steve Chowne Music 