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Reeves, C. Dactylozooid Complex (String Quartet No.2)

Dactylozooid Complex, String Quartet No.2 (2011)

Commissioned by the Quatuor Danel. Published by Edition Peters (EP72434), ii+26. Duration: 15 minutes. Premiere: Quatuor Danel, Manchester Grammar School, February 2011. Further Performances: Northwest Composers’ Festival (Manchester 2012), Ars Musica Festival (Brussels April 2013).

My first quartet explored the combination of organic and inorganic modes of transition between different tempi and associated materials within a singular structural sweep. The second quartet does so within a much more sophisticated structure that builds upon the complex tempo strategy of the Piano Concerto. As with the Concerto, this quartet presents materials that initially appear unrelated. But here they are not brought together with destructive consequences; instead a process unfolds whereby the first material ultimately dissolves into the second. The starting point was Edward T. Cone’s analysis of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, in which he reconciles a heterogeneous musical surface with an underlying process of organic development. Dactylozooid Complex is in three movements and all three conclude with exactly the same passage. But the temporal strategy towards this passage is vastly different in each of the three movements, such that the 'same music' becomes 'different music'. Movement one presents two heterogeneous materials, at MM=144 and MM=36. Across the three-movement structure, this initially inorganic relationship is reworked into one that is ultimately organic, culminating in a 'zigzagging' pulse cycle (employing interleaved ratios of 2:3 and 3:4) that ratchets down from MM=144 to MM=36, transforming one into the other. This process was partly based on a comparison of the original and final versions of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, which reveals how two initially separate movements were subsequently joined together by a transition that transforms one into the other. Rather than have the relationship as one way or the other (organic or inorganic), my second quartet presents it both ways.