Mark O'Connor: String Quartets No.'s 2 & 3 featuring Ida Kavafian, Paul Neubauer and Matt Haimovitz (2009)
Released 2009 OMAC records (dist. by Allegro and IODA)
Tracks:
- String Quartet No. 2 "Bluegrass" (I)
- String Quartet No. 2 "Bluegrass" (II)
- String Quartet No. 2 "Bluegrass" (III)
- String Quartet No. 2 "Bluegrass" (IV)
- String Quartet No. 3 "Old-Time" (I)
- String Quartet No. 3 "Old-Time" (II)
- String Quartet No. 3 "Old-Time" (III)
- String Quartet No. 3 "Old-Time" (IV)
String Quartet No. 2 "Bluegrass"
Composed February – May, 2005
As I continue to develop other artistic interpretations of vernacular and idiomatic music of my own past, I uncover new pathways in discovering how much this music from my childhood means to me in the present tense. With my String Quartet No 2, I bring to bare one of my favorite music styles I learned as an 11 and 12 year old, Bluegrass.
Bluegrass music is the vocabulary I use in the quartet and it instructs the musical language of the string quartet art form. Although in this case I admit that just like my own classical string writing is unique, such is the case with my early bluegrass playing. In other words this is not a classical interpretation of roots music, rather it is a modern interpretation of modern interpreted bluegrass music. Or put in a different way, it is my own version of my own version! The approach results in a doubling up of the musical uniqueness of my Quartet's conceptual endeavor, and ends up providing the listener with a new musical idea.
The process in which I used to compose the Quartet is a bit of a departure, even from my usual methods. I got the idea for this compositional process from the piano trio I had written just prior to it, Poets And Prophets. In that trio I utilized Johnny Cash vocal phrases and rhythmic hooks from his early group the Tennessee Two to thematically inspire the music and developmentally produce the content. Here with my Quartet, I kept that approach but now I simply wanted to use my own licks! But this is where the process became even more unusual. I hardly played any bluegrass in the last twenty years. But these Bluegrass themes, rhythms and tunes I use in the Quartet are new. I mean new to me as well! This all may be a little like riding the bicycle and never forgetting how, but with an additional twist. Even though I had not pursued bluegrass music, somewhere in the back of my mind I was still developing a repertoire of the hottest bluegrass licks and the most soulful bluegrass harmony I could muster up. I just hadn't realized it. That was until I was ready to write this "classical" string quartet.
From the bouncy bluegrass vocal like melodies, to the blistering fast hot licks, to the rhythmic bow "chopping" to the gospel yearnings of the slow movement, I wanted to comprehensively dive down deep in to the strains of this music. I wanted to further discover what this American musical art form means to string playing, what it means to this quartet, and ultimately what my own past means to me today.
Mark O'Connor – 4/8/05
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String Quartet No. 3 "Old-Time"
Composed January - April, 2008
Program Notes
String Quartet No. 3 "Old-Time" was composed on the occasion marking 400 years of history dating from the days of the first European settlements. My specific task from the Hudson Commission was to concentrate music based on the natural habitat and beauty of the Hudson as well as on the time of the first European settlers. It was natural for me to think about old-time fiddling in this light. In 1909 Washington Irving described the Catskill Mountains as a "dismembered branch of the Appalachian Mountains." My own Dutch ancestors settled in the Hudson Valley in the early 1600's, and eventually traveled down the Appalachians to settle in the South in the early 1800's. The old-time fiddling that dominated those areas along that route is the musical language utilized in creating this String Quartet.
The Hudson River is remarkable in its importance to America, and its vast beauty continues to inspire. I had a lot to draw from including my own connections to the Hudson. My own family members were among the region's first settlers from Holland and our family lore holds that distant relatives had dealings with the Native American population and may have been involved in the purchase of Manhattan Island. Our family's history records that my distant grandmother was born the "first white child"in what is now the state of New York, and after helping to establish New Amsterdam (now New York City), my family members were eventually banished by the English to populate the Hudson Valley around modern day Albany. Natives referred to the area as "Once The Pine Plains."As fate would have it, my ancestor was kidnapped by the Mohawks. But out of that incident, a bridge of culture was realized when she fell in love with the chief and married him! She had his children, and at her insistence, all of them were educated in the city. These Dutch settlers and Native American Mohawks are my ancestors.
My interest in the rich traditions of old-time fiddling, as well as my own family history throughout the Hudson River area for many generations, combine as the seeds of inspiration for the Quartet No. 3. I employ rhythms and harmonies forming a mosaic of impressionistic wonderment about the area with its rich habitat, early struggles, and development. Speed to the present day, I myself live in Manhattan, and just a couple of blocks from the Hudson River. Working on this quartet makes me feel like I have come full circle in this piece both in musical concepts and in historical references. I remember as a young boy winning first prize for fiddling in the Catskill Mountains festival in the Hudson area. (It will be forever etched in my memory because lighting struck a man on the grounds, and he did not survive.) My knowledge of the region and all of the connections throughout the history of my family are vivid with beauty, irony, and so many confluences, both profound and simple. In many ways like the early settling of Appalachia and the musically rich traditions it produced along the way.
For the musical genesis of the Quartet, I initially created phrases from the fiddle that were molded out of old-time fiddling tradition. With technical twists and turns, the phrases became unique and new but all the while still connected to the tradition. It is these phrases that I used as material to create the String Quartet. Through the process of composing, techniques such as re- harmonization, development, canonic applications spill over each other like the Hudson tributaries in the Adirondacks. The counterpoint of the Quartet invigorates and establishes itself. The result is a wholly participating body emphasizing transitions from the traditional to the contemporary in sound and style. The music here is no longer fiddle music as the inventions of the quartet embarks on a new story, a new way to play, and with a new musical idea to put forward.
Note: Quartet No. 3 "Old-Time" is the 2nd quartet in a long-term compositional project of six string quartets, all of them informed by different traditions of fiddling and American music.
Mark O'Connor – March 26, 2008
