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Glass: String Quartet No. 6 | Follow Kronos
String Quartet No. 6 (2013)By Philip Glass
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a
graduate of the University of Chicago and the
Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent
two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia
Boulanger and while there, earned money by
transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into
Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number
of innovative projects, creating a large collection
of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou
Mines Theater Company.
This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts , and the
landmark opera, Einstein on the
Beach for which he collaborated with Robert
Wilson.
Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include
music for opera, dance,
theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His scores have
received Academy
Award nominations (Kundun , The Hours , Notes on a
Scandal ) and a Golden Globe (The
Truman Show ). Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No.
8 , along with Waiting for the
Barbarians , an opera based on the book by J.M. Coetzee,
premiered in 2005.
In the past few years several new works were unveiled, including
Book of Longing
(Luminato Festival) and an opera about the end of the Civil War
entitled Appomattox
(San Francisco Opera). His Symphony No. 9 was
completed in 2011 and was premiered
by the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz, Austria on January 1, 2012
and his Symphony No. 10
received its European premiere in France in 2013. Teatro Real
Madrid and the English
National Opera commissioned Glass’s opera The Perfect
American , about the death of
Walt Disney, which premiered in January 2013 while the
Landestheater Linz premiered his
opera Spuren de Verirrten on April 12th, 2013. Upcoming projects
include a song cycle
for Angelique Kidjo and the Brussels Philharmonic as well as an
opera based on FranzKafka’s The Trial for Music Theatre
Wales.
About his Sixth String Quartet, Glass writes:
“String Quartet No. 6 is the most recent result of a
long and ripening friendship between
myself and the Kronos Quartet. Composing for string quartet has
been part of my life
from my earliest years, even as a student composer at the
Juilliard School. The Kronos
Quartet had performed and recorded all the earlier ‘numbered’
quartets before they
commissioned String Quartet No. 5 in 1991. The next
work composed for them was for
the soundtrack of the 1931 film Dracula , directed by Tod
Browning with the famous
performance by Bela Lugosi as Dracula.
“For the next 15 years, I performed Dracula with the
Kronos, with Michael Riesman
conducting, and with an additional piano part for myself. These
‘live’ performances were
very popular and frequent events, giving the Kronos and
myself ample time to get to
know each other as interpreters and performers. I can now
perfectly imagine, and even
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anticipate, the performances of David Harrington, John Sherba,
and Hank Dutt. Kronos’
new cellist, Sunny Yang, is as yet unknown to me. But, such is
my empathy with the other
players, I expect to share their enthusiasm for her as well.
“Now about String Quartet No. 6 …
“In contemporary music, No. 6 quartets have taken on special
significance, much as
symphonies No. 5 and No. 9 have in the history of symphonic
music. However, this is not
confined to contemporary music alone. Mozart’s six ‘Haydn’
quartets and Beethoven’s
Opus 18 quartets are such examples. In any case, the number six
when applied to a
quartet will usually get a composer’s attention. However, in my
case I avoided the issuetwice: first, with the
Dracula quartet music, by not numbering the music at
all; second,
with the quartet music for the film Bent, by referring to that
collection of quartets
composed in 1997 as “The Suite from Bent”.
“With the commission from Kronos for a new string quartet, I
finally had to address the
No. 6 issue. At about a half hour of music, it is a work of
significant length. The musical
language itself remains firmly ‘post-minimalist,’ as almost
everything has been since 1976.
It also remains firmly ‘tonal,’ using pan-harmonic and
polyharmonic sequences in a
rhythmic setting which is, in turn, based on a binary system of
twos and threes. This
allows for a unified harmonic/rhythmic music in which the
resulting melodic material,
though basically ambivalent, can be easily heard as harmonic and
enharmonic pitches. All
this is cast into a three-movement work in which the parts,
though structurally separate,
flow into each other, much as the movements of my String Quartet
No. 5 .
“For listeners familiar with Symphonies No. 7 through No. 10 or
Etudes for Piano 15
through 20, this will be heard as a continuation of music
developed in the last five years
or so.
“The string writing itself has taken on a denser, thicker
texture, at times sounding like
quintet or sextet music. This has come about through the
extensive string writing I’ve
done – including two violin concertos, two cello concertos, a
string symphony (No. 3), as
well as numerous solo and ensemble works for string instruments
– and has left me
familiar and comfortable with all manner of bowing and
performance techniques known
and practiced by the best players.
“My own string playing has remained rudimentary, and that was
gained through the
kindness of fellow music students when I was young and eager to
learn. They coaxed and
coached me through basic skills. And, at a young age, began
writing music for them.
“Foremost among them was Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild, a fellow
student at the Juill iard
School. For her, in return for the hours of tutoring she gave
me, I composed my very first
(un-numbered) string quartet as well as an early violin concerto
for solo violin, brass andpercussion and a string (piano) trio.
Understanding and cultivating an aptitude for string
writing is a deep and, apparently, endless undertaking. For all
of those who have helped
me in this regard – and certainly including the members of the
Kronos Quartet – I remain
forever grateful.”
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