-by James Wilson, CMSCVA Artistic Director
Our concert with the Aeolus Quartet on Friday, October 25 features three major pieces of the string quartet literature. Along with a late-period quartet by Haydn and a middle-period quartet of Beethoven, the Aeolus Quartet has chosen to perform a relatively new work, "Ariel Ascending," by American composer Christopher Theofanidis.
We always find that our audiences crave advanced info about our programs. So in that spirit we offer Chris' own notes about his music. If you would like to watch a video of the first movement to help bring Chris' words to life, click here [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWuV_C62o4w ] to listen to a performance with the Riot Ensemble.
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| Christopher Theophanidis |
for string quartet
I. begins with a breath; gliding effortlessly
II. fleeting, delicate
III. exuberant, brilliant
I started Ariel Ascending after reading the poem of Sylvia Plath, ‘Ariel,’ which conjured in me a feeling of both the beautiful and the nightmarish. I was struck by the sense of motion Plath creates ‐ one can almost feel the wind as the poem progresses.
The first movement of my quartet tries to pick up on this, by having each of the four players contribute to a single, ephemeral line that ebbs and flows gesturally.
It is the longest of the three movements at 7 ½ minutes, and is the most narrative in
its structure. Thin melodic strands emerge from delicate surfaces. The poem, from which the first movement is inspired, is:
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God's lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees! - The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks -
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air -
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel -
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
The second movement is a kind of transition out of the spirit world of the first movement. It is a true miniature, at 2 ½ minutes, and starts and stops as it goes, trying to establish its own identity. Eventually a melody emerges, but it is eventually subsumed back into the more brittle environment around it.
The third movement moves into the realm of the earth, and has a very fast, folk-like quality to it. The melodic material is harmonized in a rather strident fashion, often in intervals of 7ths and 9ths. The rhythmic base rides over a very quick eighth note pulse which constantly shifts between the feeling of two and three, creating a locally unstable flow.
Ariel Ascending was written for my very good friends, The Henschel Quartet, from Munich, three of whom are siblings. This is one of my most difficult pieces, and I would not have been able to write such a work had it not been for their incredible dedication to whatever I could dream up. I am so delighted that the Aeolus Quartet has taken up the work now.
