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Second String Quartet - Dead Roses
Dead Roses – Second String Quartet (1990)
A programme note for a performance at Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow
Dundee
Tayside
March 2002
John Harris
Artistic Director
Paragon Ensemble
Glasgow
Dear John
as promised some notes on the Second String Quartet – Dead Roses. It was commissioned by the University of Glasgow as part of the McEwen Bequest in 1989
and was premiered at the University by the Mistry String Quartet in 1990. I’ve always been interested in taking an unusual slant on the string quartet medium/. The first string quartet – Civil Disobedience on the Northern front written a year before this one uses amplified instruments and the third commissioned by the Salisbury Festival in 2000 is a collection of ten reflections on specially commissioned poems for the quartet where there is five minutes of silent readings of the text between the movements, The second is no exception. I don’t really want to go on about the obvious unusual element in this quartet – as soon as the piece starts or even before it starts its quite obvious although I would like to stress that the decision to write it this way was nor intended to be tricksy in any way.
I’m not trying to score points in the unusual stakes.
The string quartet has of course got a deserved historical reputation as a canvas for the private mind. Its such an intense sound and also such an intense chamber group socially.
I’ve been quite close to a couple of string quartets, including the Mistry that premiered this work. Both quartets have now split – and whilst they were both together it was quite an emotional rollercoaster ride. Maybe it gets to quartets I don’t know.
Anyway the work is about this intensity in relationships – about those moments when you can continue or stop. The quartet is at this point in bar one of the work. They have reached that point where they can continue or stop.
Realise this is the end and there’s nowhere to go or decide to continue to see where the come out.
It’s also about memory, and specifically the memory of relationship and music’s part in all this. Vinyl,(remember vinyl) still has this particular quality – you know when the cracks and hisses on a record are sometimes as emotive as the music the vinyl contains.
Also the difference between music as stimulus for memory where sometimes the memory is the listening of that music in a different time – do we always listen to music in the same way – and does those private taped collections we give each other always mean the same thing.
Although the piece in one long movement it can be broken down into five tracks on the side of a record with an interplay of memory throughout. Sometimes you hear things “straight” sometimes you hear them repeated through memory in a way that you can never really be sure what’s on the record , what’s in your head , and what’s a memory of listening to the same thing many years ago – oh and there’s the odd quote.
I wrote it to get rid of a few things – well we all need to do that sometimes – its about other stuff as well but I wont go into that at the moment.
All the best
Gordon
PS – I’ve just looked at the top of the letter and noticed the aptness of your name
Instrumentation
second violin/viola/cello
First Performance
Mistry String Quartet Glasgow University May 1990