Album Notes

Quartet #9, in Bb "Xaos" Quartet #9, in Bb - I Romance 7:18 Quartet #9, in Bb - II Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came 14:27 Quartet #9, in Bb - III Agnus Dei (Non-linear counterpoint) 4:31 Quartet #9, in Bb - IV Fantasia (Flight) 7:46 While four movements are traditional in classical music since Haydn created a mysterious balance of a complex developmental movement, a slow movement, a dance and a looser finale - this custom has been diverged away from for over a century. But within the four movement world, like the Ruy Lopez opening in chess, there is a particular search for symmetry, and always trying to find the right note, the right movement to follow the next. The Romance is a tender and melodic slow movement, the call of nature and of the sweet winds that bring sweet rains, only to have the clouds open up and reveal the bustle of the city of god that moves the cosmos. There was something Byronic about Oldman, brooding on his past and future, and facing forward to the darkness that shrouds the future in uncertainty. it was a natural thing to write a movement that riffed off of Browing and Byron - Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came. And it is indeed a quest in music, with the slow unravelling of the filaments that hide a mystery beneath them, brutal encounters in the dark, joyous reunions and finally, victory. The first movement completed was "Non-linear counterpoint", a very direct expression of loss, simple, clear, direct and hymn like. The last movement "Fantasia", let free the spirit to hover over the world, touching here and there, looking down on everyone who wrestles with a bit of knowledge, trying to pry another secret loose. It is winged music, of unimpeded intellectual energy, but suffused with the melodic quest for a more perfect beauty. If the quartet is "about" anything it is the non-linear nature of knowledge and the quest to combine the sciences with a new mathematics. Long time listeners to my music will notice the overt use of minimalism, and it seems a reasonable place to make note of this. Minimalism is a movement in the arts towards a sharp edged modernism. The early modernism, while it had a radical simplification of gesture, favored uneven edges and even at its geometric, a kind of organic gesturalism. With Mondrian, Sol Lewit and others, there began a drive to express in pure lines and sharp blocks. In music this idea was reflected in music post-Cage towards directness. Minimalism is, like the blues and rock, simply part of the musical vocabulary of our age, it also represents the "liberation of consonance" - to match the early 20th century's liberation of dissonance. The most important thing about it is that its melodies imply a different harmonic backdrop. Composers struggled with this, these melodies did not harmonize in the traditional ways. So, as happened several times before - they went back to imitative counterpoint and simplicity of texture, until such time as the means of harmonizing these ideas began to appear. I don't listen to most minimalist works long, as soon as the melodic materializes, I'm ready to turn it off, so often the obvious implications are not worked out, and the large scale structures are left, lying there, begging to be released from the chug chug underpinnings. Hence my music often has a great deal of minimalist surface, but it makes hard core minimalist devotees agitated. One person who had followed Glass since Einstien grew angry at my music - he said it was a betrayal of what minimalism stands for. If it is an ism, then count me a heretic to it. String Quartet #10, in G "The Neo-Classical" Quartet #10, in G - I Nachtsmusick 6:30 Quartet #10, in G - II Adagio 2:47 Quartet #10, in G - III Scherzo 6:49 Quartet #10, in G - IV Festivals 5:47 Come to the sunny 20th century, filled with bright open spaces and happy dissonance, or so the travel guides read. Sometimes it is necessary