Fourteen
Quartets.

Just as I didn’t expect to be writing a series of string quartets at this stage of my life, I never would have predicted, in my youth, that I would be writing fugues. Before 2004 I had written precisely one. Since then, I have written 48 fugues, and substantial fugato sections in choral works and pieces of chamber music. Most of these are for piano, and are based on the names of friends or family members, turned into notes and utilized as the subject. This procedure is explained in my commentary on “A Partita for Aymeric Dupré la Tour.”

With the exception of the one dedicated to Sumarsam, which was premiered by the Atalanta String String Quartet, all of the performances of my quartets (numbered ones and shorter pieces) have been done by the West End String Quartet. Marianne Vogel, one of the WESQ violinists, is a music theorist as well as a performer. She asked me about the process I used to turn people’s names into fugue subjects; she was keenly interested. I turned her name into a fugue subject and began to write a fugue based on it, for string quartet of course. I thought it would be fun to write fugues on the names of the other members of the WESQ as well. Thus, the idea for this quartet was born. The prelude combines all four names in a homophonic context, rather than a polyphonic one, and each fugue is longer than the one that precedes it. Quickly realizing that I needed a change of pace number, and re-enamored of Beethoven (it was 2020, a big Beethoven year), I shamelessly composed the Shameless Beethovenian Scherzo.

The composer Stephen Soderberg was for many years the senior consultant for contemporary music at the Library of Congress. He wrote about major figures in American music of our time (Elliott Carter, for example), and did many interviews (notably with Roger Reynolds).

In his spare time at the L of C Stephen would browse in the contemporary music collections, including the papers of Aaron Copland. He found a 12-tone row, and sketches for a string quartet based on it, in one of the last boxes, put together shortly before Copland’s death. Steve has an informal project to encourage composers to write pieces using this row. Until I found out about it the only person who took him up on it was Elliott Schwartz. I learned of this row through Daniel James Wolf (American composer residing in Germany, Wesleyan PhD), who posted the row on Facebook. I was captivated by the notion of “Copland’s last row,” an important scrap of manuscript paper, lying on the deceased composer’s desk, pregnant with possibility. I composed a substantial piano piece entitled "Homage to Aronchik." (“Aronchik” was Serge Koussevitsky’s nickname for Copland.)

Some time later, Stephen Soderberg returned to this subject. He convinced me that I should also write a string quartet on this row! And indeed, why not? The result is this four-movement work, sharing a row with the big piano piece, but otherwise totally different in content and effect. Both “Homage to Aronchik” and this quartet are rigorously serial, and use only melodic and harmonic materials derived from this row. The name of the dedicatee also appears, but in such a way that it grows out of the row.

“Aaron Copland” emerges as: A A D A G C A B E A G A

The great American visual artist Sol LeWitt had a voracious appetite for music. He had a collection of 3,937 cassette tape mixes, the contents of which he personally dubbed from the radio and from his vast collection of vinal LPs. His personal friends, living composers Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Alvin Lucier, are represented, of course. But he had extraordinarily broad taste. He enjoyed the music of Renaissance composer Guillaume Dufay, Chopin, famous twentieth century composers like Stravinsky and Britten, more obscure ones like Havergal Brian, American composers William Billings and Arthur Foote, and hundreds of others. But his favorite composer was Johann Sebastian Bach. He had eight different performances of Bach’s The Art of Fugue, and even more performances of The Well-Tempered Clavier.

This string quartet is an aural analogue to one of LeWitt’s enormous wall drawings, executed by assistants or students. These take many forms, but one of his specific procedures is the inspiration for this quartet. A line of quite specific curvature, designed by the artist, is copied at the top of a white wall with a magic marker by a member of the team. A second member of the team copies the line with a magic marker of a different color. Similarly, lines fill in the entire space of the wall, making a giant multicolored ribbon of considerable visual density. As the listener will hear, the musical lines of the four musicians have strong visual implications.

This quartet was composed in the white heat of inspiration shortly after Bill Wasch’s passing. It begins with “A Wistful Introduction,” which speaks for itself. The second movement is in a modified sonata allegro form, and introduces a dance-like tune based on the letters in his complete name, William Karl Wasch, Senior. There is an extended development section that spins out a post-minimalist passage in ways I hope are both surprising and pleasing.

The finale is a set of variations, culminating in a quadruple fugue, based on an early nineteenth century fuguing tune, MORNING by Amos Pilsbury. It can be found in that great compendium of American psalmody, The Sacred Harp, on page 163. Only recently, after completing this quartet, have I become aware of the fascinating history of this tune, which I need to study more carefully. Long a personal favorite of mine, MORNING, as found in modern editions of The Sacred Harp, is characterized by powerful dissonant chords, based on fourths, and an underlying harmonic stasis. Pilsbury, a silversmith by trade, was born in Newbury, Massachusetts, but spent most of his life in Charleston, South Carolina. (In the late eighteenth century Charleston was a major musical center.) In 1799 he compiled and published The United States Sacred Harmony, in which the tune first appears. The original 1799 version has some of the harmonic effects I have mentioned, but by no means all of them. It also has rhythmic irregularities that get smoothed out in subsequent editions, and a few grace notes that disappear. In 1844 B. F. White, compiler of The Sacred Harp and a composer of formidable talent, included MORNING in the new volume, but eliminated the alto. (White thought it was unnatural for women to sing low, and removed a great many alto parts from previously composed pieces.) The stripped-down version has a contrapuntal clarity that actually accentuates the harmonic originality of the tune. A new alto part, probably composed by Anna L. Blackshear, was included in the 1902 edition. The effect of Ms. Blackshear’s astonishing new alto part (which probably resulted from improvising) is to significantly increase the level of dissonance and the tune’s sense of harmonic stasis. So, one of the most modern-sounding pieces in the book, with harmonic language suggestive of Stravinsky or Bartok, was composed by committee over a period of 104 years, and each iteration of the work is more gritty than the previous one.

Why would anyone deliberately make such a composition more dissonant and more static? I think the answer lies in the text. Isaac Watts writes of the Crucifixion and Resurrection in vivid language, beautifully set to vivid music in this little masterpiece. Here are the first and last stanzas:

He dies, the friend of sinners dies, The rising God forsakes the tomb;

Low Salem’s daughters weep around; Up to His Father’s court He flies,

A solemn darkness veils the skies, Cherubic legions guard Him home,

A sudden trembling shakes the ground. And shout Him welcome to the skies.

My variations begin with the tune as it appears in the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp. The melody is in the viola. The variations start off close to the source, but get farther and farther away from it, introducing more and more dissonance and even improvisatory elements. The final quadruple fugue divides the melody itself into four sections, which become the four subjects. These combine in increasingly complex ways. The editorial assistance of Alex Waterman, who knows far more about string instruments than I ever will, is gratefully acknowledged.

Aymeric died in an automobile accident on Sunday 29 May 2022. He was 49 years old. I learned of his death the same day, and was stunned by the news. His passing was brutal and senseless, on the way to play a church service. The last time I heard him play was in the Wesleyan Chapel, the previous December. He played the difficult, musically obscure Four Duets of J. S. Bach. It was some of the most beautiful harpsichord playing I have ever heard. As soon as I received the phone call about Aymeric’s passing, I knew I had to write a string quartet in his memory: a tribute to a friend but also a protest of his sudden, pointless death. Composing in the white heat of inspiration, I finished the seven-movement Partita in about two months.

In 2004 I began to write pieces based on people’s names. For years these were piano pieces, but in 2011 I wrote A String Quartet for Alvin Lucier, the first in a series of quartets which now number fourteen (two more are in the pipeline). All of them are based on names.

Like many Frenchmen, Aymeric had a glorious, elaborate name — Aymeric François Esprit Dupré la Tour. Using an 18th century system that converts the letters of the alphabet into musical pitches, I derived from his complete name the following series:

A D F E D B C F D A G C A B E E Eb B D B F D G B D E E A F A G D

and the attendant probability distribution; 5 As, 5 Bs, 2 Cs, etc. The long series became the subject of the Fugue; the probability distribution determines the chords of the Prelude and the Courante; and so on. As the various movements progress, the series and the probabilities fade into the background, and eventually disappear . . .

A few comments about individual movements. The Courante is slow, the tempo of the French court dance. As it says in the score, it ‘should be very pale, a ghost of courante, as it were.’ The ghostly effect is enhanced by the use of leather mutes. (Thanks to Alex Waterman for this excellent suggestion.) The exuberance of the first Bourrée is a welcome change after the seriousness of the first three movements — but then the second Bourrée erupts into an almost violent lament. The Rondeau en cinq (in five-eight time; note the French spelling) is a gentle, wistful return to the seriousness of the opening movements. The Badinage is quite literally a joke; in the score it is marked ‘vif et facétieux,’ ‘fast and jocular.’ (Yes, I know ‘facétieux’ has other meanings.) These two movements are my tributes to Aymeric’s wit and considerable charm.

The bass line and basic progression of the final Chaconne are derived from a litany in the Orthodox Church, the text of which is ‘Lord, have mercy.’ It is a prayer for Aymeric’s repose. The contrapuntal density of the piece is a reflection of the many complexities of his life.

John Jackson was my next-door neighbor for many years. He was a complicated man, and in many ways quite the curmudgeon. He had very few friends. After he died I learned he had a sister who lived in South Carolina with whom he had almost no contact. His nephew in a neighboring town never visited him. When he was terminally ill and in assisted living, I was one of the three people who visited him. He was related to prominent local businessmen, and had a good business himself in his youth. However, he was retired when I knew him, and something seemed to have happened to all his money.

As unlikely as it may seem, he was in many ways a very good neighbor. He would keep an eye on the house and property when we were away, and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the immediate area — who lived in which house, what happened to so-and-so who moved away, the history of one old building or another. And he had a sly sense of humor. When he became so ill at the end of his life, I became very concerned about him. I spoke of him with his bookkeeper, who often stopped by. She had known him since they were in grammar school together, and had become surrogate family when his real family would have little or nothing to do with him.

When he died, I wanted to remember him in music. Almost no one was going to remember him otherwise, and he was a character to be remembered, in my opinion at least. And there are all those glorious fiddle tunes with the name Jackson in the title! “Jackson’s Walk to Limerick,” for example and many others that seemed quite appropriate to John himself — “Jackson’s Stranger,” “Jackson’s Sport,” “Jackson’s Mistake,” and perhaps especially “Jackson’s Bottle of Claret,” “Jackson’s Bottle of Brandy,” and “Jackson’s Night Cap.” These and many other tunes find their way into the last movement, “John Jackson, his Sett.” This movement is also a tribute to the late Judith McColloh, who encouraged me to write music based on traditional fiddle tunes when I was still at the University of Illinois. (Thank you, Judith, for your present of a photocopy of the Samuel Byard book, Hill Country Tunes, almost sixty years ago!)

St. Panteleimon was a third-century physician, and the patron saint of healing in the Orthodox Church. “The Grumpy Gavotte” isn’t particularly grumpy. The most famous Jackson fiddle tune, of course, is “Jackson’s Victory,” a.k.a. “The Eighth of January,” a.k.a. “The Battle of New Orleans.” My optional seventh movement, “Jackson’s Victory Revisited,” invites the four members of the quartet to improvise over a collage of three pre-recorded versions of this irresistible tune. Check out one of these, for the extraordinary cello playing of Tristan Clarridge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bf-nQJj9IY&list=RD7Bf-nQJj9IY&start_radio=1

Everyone else playing in this version is just as fabulous, but TC does things no one else does. On the cello, no less. (Thank you, Alex Waterman, yet again, for your advice on how to get a similar effect in “John Jackson, his Sett.”

Sumarsam and I have been friends and colleagues for a bit over 50 years. At this point he is the only member of the Music Department faculty who has been here longer than I have. When I came to Wesleyan in 1974, I knew next to nothing about Javanese music. I still know precious little about this magnificent, subtle tradition, but I am a big fan.

Over the years I have picked up some very useful ideas about composing from hearing the gamelan. Some of these I have absorbed by osmosis; some from conversation with Sumarsam and others (especially the late David McAllister); and most recently from the discussion and performance of Harjito’s music last spring. (Thank you Harjito!) In the early 2000s, when I was co-director of music at South Congregational Church in Middletown, I persuaded the church to have Gregory Acker make a gamelan for us. Greg calls these instruments, hand-crafted from materials you can buy at the hardware store, Gamelan Amadindas. The South Church iteration of Gamelan Amadindas was featured in three short musicals I wrote to be performed by members of the congregation. More recently, I was able to sneak a quotation from a piece of Indonesian dance music into my Rhapsody for French Horn and Orchestra (2019).

When Sumarsam’s wife Maeny retired from Wesleyan in 2013 I wrote a fugue in her honor, based on the letters in her name. “Urip Sri Maeny” becomes G D B B Eb D B F A E G D in the system I use for turning the alphabet into pitches. This fugue for piano is quite straightforward as to counterpoint. The listener will note the gradual slow-down in the last measures, and the final gong.

The composition, premiered by The Atalanta Quartet, is a birthday present for Sumarsam. Begun in the summer of 2024, it was completed in December of that year. Like Maeny’s fugue, Sumarsam’s quartet features the letters of his name, turned into notes: Eb G F A D Eb A F. This procedure is explained in my commentary on “A Partita for Aymeric Dupré la Tour.” The reader is also invited to check out the Wikipedia article entitled “Musical cryptogram.” Scroll down to the heading “French.”

In addition to the pitches in his name, Sumarsam’s quartet has passages in modified Indonesian scales. Slendro is used a bit, but pelog is featured. The entire final section, call it the last three and a half minutes of the piece, uses only the pitches of pelog — C# B A#- A- F# E D+ — but without the microtonal inflections of the various gamelan instruments. These pitches create their own sound world. The chords don’t sound particularly Indonesian, but they don’t sound like a typical Western harmonic palate either. In this section I did something with the passing of musical time that is quintessentially Javanese. The four instruments slow down incrementally, as in Maeny’s fugue, but the gesture is much larger; an entire three and a half minutes. Moderato, quarter note = 72 beats per minute, yields to quarter = 69, then quarter = 66, each phrase dropping one click of the metronome, down to quarter = 54, with a smooth ritard into the final chords, which are marked Molto lento, quarter = 38. The fermata on the last note is to be held as long as possible. Hopefully I have invoked at least a bit of the profound satisfaction resulting from the magnificent relaxation of tempo that characterizes gamelan music.