RIDE THIS CURRENT

The creation of music is a continuum. A beautiful, complicated, labyrinthine continuum for which the terms “new” and “traditional” are far too limiting. In fact, let me propose that the only dichotomy that truly exists in the sonic realm is “Music I’ve heard” vs. “Music I have yet to hear.”

In Spektral Quartet, we’ve staked our entire career on this principle: that the space in which music of the past interacts with music of the present is where the magic lives. An extraordinary thing happens when we draw parallels between works separated by decades or centuries: the unfamiliar becomes familiar, and enticing. This alchemy burns brightly in both directions: music written before our great-great-grandparents were born is vitalized in a new way when performed in dialogue with a piece published only recently—and fresh, wet ink doesn’t sound so foreign when paired with a historic score that shares some of the same creative motivations.

Which brings us to the program you’re about to experience…and well done, friend, you’ve picked a particularly good one!

First, there was our desire to see what Philip Glass, Franz Schubert, and Samuel Adams had to say to one another. The most apparent connection appears with their use of transformation through repetition—in the literal sense with the minimalist cycling found in the Glass and Adams, as well as with Schubert’s signature waves of arpeggios underpinning a melody. There is a beautiful hypnosis in areas of each that sets a distinctive mood, but in a way that allows the listener to bring their own experience to the landscape.

This is also a project born out of friendship. The Glass is one of the first contemporary works four friends with aspirations of becoming a professional string quartet played together more than a decade ago. The Schubert was unanimously exciting to the quartet—four musicians in a friendship that might be more accurately described as a marriage—as we brain­stormed exceptional pieces from the traditional repertoire that deserve more time on stage. And our commissioning of Samuel Adams is the result of a friendship that deepened during Sam’s tenure as composer-in-residence for our hometown band, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Now, on to the music…

What was your introduction to the music of Philip Glass? Mine was a cassette of Glassworks that I pilfered from my mother’s collection in the 4th grade. For a composer who has penned over 30 operas, 12 symphonies, and eight string quartets, it’s perhaps unusual that the culture tends to focus on his film scoring, but those iconic works—Koyaanisqatsi, The Truman Show, The Hours, etc.—no doubt account for the reason that “Philip Glass” is one of the few living composers that just about any American can name at the drop of a hat.

For his String Quartet No. 2, Company, we are in the realm of not film, but theater. Glass was approached for this commission by the performer Frederick Neuman to create interstitial music for Samuel Beckett’s novella, Company, which Neuman would perform as a monologue. Beckett’s writing here is unique because of its autobiographical content—an existential fever dream in which vignettes from his past—such as leaping out of a tree only to be saved by the branches beneath—escape to the surface.

As Glass tells it, “I liked the idea of using the medium of the string quartet that would allow for both an introspective and passionate quality well suited to the text. Not surprisingly, these four short movements have turned out to be a thematically cohesive work that now, as my String Quartet No. 2, has taken on a life of its own.”

Encountering Glass’ Quartet No. 2 is something like being tucked into the window seat on a train as rain streams horizontally across the glass. Amidst this melancholic atmosphere, the hypnotic effect of telephone polls whipping past at regular intervals and street lights intermittently inflaming the retreating droplets of water makes introspection impossible to avoid. There is a moodiness to it, and yet because of its cyclical nature, it becomes a blank canvas onto which one’s own nostalgia, or regret, or wistfulness, come into focus just as vividly—and personally—as that of those sitting to your left and right in this concert hall.

Given the turmoil and heartbreak that Franz Schubert was weathering in his personal life, it might be expected that his String Quartet in A minor (Rosamunde) would be a bleak, cheerless affair. He was failing publicly as an opera composer, deteriorating physically from syphi­lis, and overwhelmed by depression. If his circumstances made their way, even in small ways, onto the page—and can any composer really divorce their music completely from their own experience?—any sullenness or despondency does not linger long here.

Take the opening as an excellent example. An obsessive ostinato (repeating rhythmic figure) in the viola and cello provide a foundation of almost simmering dread—or at least pathos—as the second violin outlines minor harmonies over which the first violin quietly and lyrically laments. And in a mere 22 measures, Schubert parts the clouds for a far more hopeful, major version of this same material. Even if you’ve heard this piece dozens of times, this moment is quite pleasantly unexpected. The second movement (Andante) that follows is a charmingly innocent set of variations during which turbulence is fleeting, continually swallowed by song. While the Menuetto that follows is perhaps shaded by a patina of blue nostalgia, the culminating fourth movement (Allegro moderato) is all glee and gusto. Effervescent virtuosity abounds in the first violin while chipper, dotted-rhythm trots amongst the four voices keep the proceedings upright and lively. Again, only hints of trouble waft in momentarily, but the ending is a curious one. At the risk of projecting autobiography on to this magnificent quartet, the zesty music seems to retreat from our gaze before the credits roll, so to speak, with two very emphatic, final chords. Was this all a blissful daydream—a much-needed escape—from the darker corners of Schubert’s own, unquiet existence? An escape he couldn’t entirely escape?

Schubert was a leaping-off point for our friend Samuel Adams, though his String Quartet No. 2, Current, is neither an homage or a re-imagining. I find it in the obsessive repetition of gestures, especially in the middle section of this extraordinary score. Repetition can give us a satisfying return to a known experience, but it can also create a feeling of claustrophobia…an inability to escape. Here, as in the Rosamunde, we have both. Brightly hued, explosive exclamations by the quartet cycle back on themselves, offset by scurryings up the fingerboard—in this case relishing in their sameness rather than held captive by it. This celebratory atmosphere shifts into one of a gentle cascading, as voices take turns bubbling up from a constant stream of fleet 16th-notes. The effect is hypnotic, and deeply pleasurable.

By now, you’ve noticed the four snare drums and the tentacles of black cable reaching back toward center stage. Our cellist, Russ, is triggering electronic tones from his stand that stir, and worry, and excite the drum heads and snare coils at the four corners of the quartet. It is the way in which Sam has integrated these shimmering auras of sound into the acoustic strings that elevates this piece into something altogether fascinating and unusual. Rather than processing our individual instrument sounds through a filter, he instead stirs the electronic realm into an acoustic one so that the sound filling the room is both heightened, but ultimately familiar.

Here’s Sam: “The result is a virtuosic display of four individuals performing with artificial, indifferent musical elements. Together a complex polyphonic organism emerges; the voices from the string quartet are rarely placed in a hierarchy in relation to one another or in relation to the snare drums.”

As we’ve workshopped and performed sections of this mesmeric piece in Chicago and elsewhere, we’ve been struck by the scope and variety of responses from individual members of the audience. Like the Glass, and to some extent like the Schubert, this is music that leaves space for one’s own history, current predicaments, and memory. You, the listener, are not being led down a predetermined path, but rather invited into a vast mirage—a playground in which your thoughts may roam freely, enhanced by these marvelous sounds.

—Doyle Armbrust