I just completed a work that I've tentatively titled five quartets as one. I began this piece on the 24th of January. One month later it's finished in first draft and lasts just over 47 minutes.
I'll be inputting the work over the next weeks, uploading it to SoundCloud, and linking it to this site and my personal Facebook page. I'll edit as I do the inputting, a habit I've always had even when I was working with pen and ink.
It remains to be seen if each of these could be played individually, stand alone, which I've had in mind as I wrote it. Hearing it all as one as kind of a cycle is the ultimate goal with this.
And it seems the string quartet holds a special place in my thinking.
This piece is kind of testing and experimenting with a renewed sense of counterpoint, one that includes the most basic definition of the term and the underlying concepts embodied in the academic approaches, and my research into Bach and later composers but, most importantly, ignoring those aspects that point towards stylistic use or stylistic definitions.
I prefer large forms. They allow for not simply more information or more display but more depth and more ways in which to allow the material to interact. I'm aware that such a large work stands little chance of performance. If that had been a consideration I should not have written nearly as much as I have. It may be said that, like Reger, I should have revised more and written less. But, as I've said, I revise as I copy.
There is always the chance that I might find this work has too many flaws. That's happened before. Neither concerns about performance nor whether or not the work should be kept in my catalog has ever been a concern while writing, regardless of the outcome.
As I upload major portions of the work I may add to this narrative. Stay tuned.
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