Skrzyp Skrzyń (2010)
Instrumentation: String Quartet
Duration: 13'
Commissioned for the Calder Quartet by the MATA Festival and the Carlsbad Festival.
Premiered by the Calder Quartet at the MATA Festival, Le Poisson Rouge, April 20, 2010
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NOTES: When, as a child violinist, I learned to find the natural harmonics of the strings, it opened the door to a whole world of notes and sounds that weren't in my method books. There was a mystical and physical truth surrounding these sounds and resonances - pure, rich, whistling, or squeaky. Skrzyp Skrzyń is built as a single gesture from the simplest concepts of engaging the instruments: movement on the strings from high to low and from fast bowing to slow. Each of the four sections tonicizes a different open string by using the just-intoned pitches of its overtone series, and tempos and polyrhythms are all expressions of the basic harmonic pitch ratios (3:2, 5:4, 7:4, etc). The title translates from Polish as "the creaking of chests" and is very onomatopoeic: pronounced something like "s-k-ship s-k-shin". It was written for the Calder Quartet and was jointly commissioned by MATA and the Carlsbad Festival.