26 Jun String Quartet No. 6: strolling in the ultimate (2022)
Commissioned and premiered by Cramer Quartet. Dedicated to Thích Nhất Hạnh. Written, in part, while in-residence at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Marble House Project.
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String Quartet No. 6: Strolling in the Ultimate was commissioned by Cramer Quartet and received its world premiere at Connecticut’s Music Mountain Festival by Jessica Park, Chiara Fasani Stauffer, Keats Dieffenbach, and Shirley Hunt.
Haydn: Dialogues is a multi-season commissioning project that reimagines the traditional string quartet cycle. Over the course of the ten seasons, concluding in 2032 (Haydn’s 300th birth anniversary), the Cramer Quartet will perform Haydn’s 68 string quartets alongside newly commissioned works by composers of marginalized identities. Each commission is an invitation to respond to an opus from Haydn’s string quartet oeuvre in the composer’s own musical voice, writing specifically for historical instruments.
The first installment of Haydn: Dialogues will premiere in New York City on April 3, 2022 with a new work by American composer Alexandra du Bois performed alongside Haydn’s Op. 20 No. 3 and Op. 20 No. 6 quartets.
With this project, Cramer Quartet connects its passion for historical performance with a commitment to rebalancing the string quartet canon by centering the voices of women, non-(cis)males, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ folx and other communities historically underrepresented in classical music.
PROGRAM NOTE
What if Joseph Haydn had experienced airplane travel and got to look down on earth through sky, clouds, misty contrails—noctilucence (night-shining) in the mesosphere—looking down on the planet like John Lennon did from the airplane when he drafted ‘Imagine’ down on a napkin? Earth atmosphere, polar mesospheric clouds, sky travel, the intensity of photographic imagery—they are ours today. Like Joseph Haydn’s court music, The National, John Lennon, or other inspiring white men, music is often about people and places. The deconstruction and re-imagining of fragments of Haydn’s Op. 20 quartets live within a new musical landscape in my sixth string quartet.
As we enter a classical music’s first reckoning, John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ lyrics echo alongside Rev. Charles Albert Tindley’s “We Shall Overcome” lyrics, along with ethereal colors of the many shades present within sunsets around the world, the commonality of these sky views (but not equality, yet) traveling on the earth, and the not so common traveling in the earth’s atmosphere in polar mesospheric clouds, but something we now get to see photography of from space. “Imagine all the people sharing all the world.” –John Lennon. Music and imagery can unite people but are not necessarily a universal language. My music, as is life, is inspired by nature and people, and to drawing attention to unnecessary suffering of both.
None of us are old enough to remember when attending a classical music world premiere meant hearing synthesized song fragments among other musical techniques—like J.S. Bach or Joseph Haydn used to employ. Or are we?
The subtitle of the quartet, “strolling in the ultimate,” is inspired by and is taken from text by peace activist and Zen monk Thích Nhất Hạnh’s‘strolling in the ultimate, enjoying space outside of space, time outside of time. Hanh shares how to find internal peace outside earthly bodies that are influenced by time, space, and sound. The serenity of A=430Hz tuning as well as historical performance practices, pitchfield techniques, andmy own compositional choices generate resonance and calmness that I had longed to immerse in for over a decade before being commissioned by The Cramer Quartet—for whom I crafted every note in this quartet. Like Haydn was known to innovate in, I too use rhythm, songs, and harmony to achieve dramatic expectations, and I do this in my own vernacular. But all people-artists do.
String Quartet No. 6 was commissioned by The Cramer Quartet for Haydn: Dialogues Series. It was written, in part, while composer-in-residence at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Marble House Project. It is dedicated to peace activist, author, poet, Zen Buddhist monk, and teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926-2022) and to Cramer Quartet. The words expressed in this program note are of the composer only and do not represent those of any other organizations or persons. –Alexandra du Bois ©2022
