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Second string quartet

Commissioned by Südwestrundfunk/Donaueschinger Musiktage 2010. Premiered by the JACK Quartet at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, October 2010, with eight additional international performances, including Ultraschall Festival (Berlin), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), and SONiC Festival/Miller Theater (New York). Broadcast by SWR-2, NDR Kultur, Deutschlandradio Kultur, and Kulturadio RBB. The project was supported by an AHRC Practice-Led and Applied Research Grant (£17,190), with additional support from the British Council Composer Bursary programme (£1,000). The principal development in the work is a multi-coloured tablature stave, notating independent and intricate x-, y-, and z-axis motions for the left and right hands. This notational approach significantly simplifies the notation of choreographic motion that had previously required independent musical staves for each axis of movement. The notational developments are detailed in the following articles: Cassidy, A., ‘The String Quartet as laboratory and playground for experimentation and tradition (or, opening out/closing in)’, Contemporary Music Review, Dan Albertson and Richard Toop, eds., Volume 32, Issue 3-4, Summer 2013, and Cassidy, A., ‘Constraint Schemata, Multi-axis Movement Modeling, and Unified, Multi-parametric Notation for Strings and Voices’ Search Journal for New Music and Culture, Autumn 2013. Lectures on the work have been given at University of Leeds, CUNY-Brooklyn, Columbia University, CalArts (Los Angeles), and Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, among others. The most important outgrowth of this new string notation is the freeing of physical movements from their normal geographical roles and positions. Mappings of speed, pressure, and position are guided by a collection of simple gestural models, which interact with a superimposed set of restrictions of available space for those movements. This restriction and resistance occurs simultaneously and independently on each of the six possible planes of movement for both hands, allowing for an emergence of unconventional performance techniques enacted in unexpected locations on the instrument, resulting in novel timbres and musical shapes.