Violin
Violin
Viola
Violoncello
Pierre Boulez’s Livre pour quatuor is among the most complex chamber music works of the 20th century. At the same time, the score—left unfinished by the composer—also has a fragmentary quality. The JACK Quartet, regularly heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal over the last few seasons, performs individual movements from Boulez’s only string quartet, pairing them with recent works by Eva-Maria Houben and Anthony Cheung, among others, and the String Quartet in Four Parts by Boulez’s contemporary John Cage.
How would you describe your new piece Escape Rites in five words?
Obsolete machinery unearthed by anxious minds
What is different when you write for the ensemble you’re a member of?
The techniques and harmonic language this piece is built on stem from the years of in-depth work together as an ensemble, building our practice of extended string playing, microtonal tuning, and polyrhythmic grooves. I learned how this piece feels from my years of playing together with the quartet.
Looking at the rest of the program, whose music feels closer to you—Boulez or Cage? And why?
They are both close to me in different ways. But they both make me feel a little uneasy…
What’s the biggest challenge when composing for strings?
I’m a violinist, I love writing for strings. I don’t think of the instrumentation as a challenge but rather a joyful limitation to what the instruments do well.
Is there a particular quality or kind of expression you look for when writing music?
I’m looking for a way to share how my mind works: trying to create a language that gives me new ways to say things and new things to say.
That commitment to finding the music — the sheer beauty — in what could be merely exercises in complexity, to treating every composer like a distinct style that can be ever more fully inhabited, is what sets JACK apart. Zachary Woolfe, NYT 2023
