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chambre privée - work for string quartet; commissioned by the Bozzini Quartet, to be premiered by them in Montreal, 20 April 2012

This string quartet develops the concept of a new method for the large-scale organisation of harmony – the ‘harmoniad’ principle – first extensively explored in my works ‘an der Schattengrenze’ (2002) and ZONE (2004), and discussed in ‘Microtones and Microtonalities’ (ed. Fox, 2004). In ‘chambre privée’, for the first time, there is a restriction of available intervals to permutations of the combination of the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th harmonics. This generates a complex microtonal environment, whose accurate realisation in notation and performance necessitated further developments – the specification of cent deviation in the score and the use of pitch-trackers in performance.

In addition ‘chambre privée’ is concerned with the string quartet itself as a formal and historic entity. The use of extremely low dynamic levels and long durations at the start of the work draws listeners into a world of harmonic trial and error, suggesting a music unaware of the quartet’s venerable position in the classical canon; the quartet instead is a new medium which must learn how to behave. The eventual disruption of the ensemble – the first violin abandoning the others – is intended to suggest that the work represents a failed experiment.

The work explores a central issue in new music, the extent to which listeners can be expected to bring common knowledge to the reception of a new work. On the one hand, audiences familiar with the quartet repertoire will understand the work as a transgressive ‘experiment’ within that repertoire; on the other hand, audiences primarily interested in new music (who, evidence suggests, are increasingly unlikely to be familiar with the quartet’s history) will understand it as a work in which something begins and is then disrupted.

A longer discussion of ‘chambre privée’ will be published in Volume 2 of a forthcoming issue of ‘Contemporary Music Review’.