Consilience

Program note

A transcription of the original Consilience for violin and viola, this version adds to the collaborative aspect of the original the further obstacle of space. The players are asked to sit at least 6 feet from each other in a dilated version of the traditional quartet seating.

The melody is constantly distributed among the four players, demanding a particular kind of listening — to oneself, to the others, to the overall result. Canons at the fifth recur throughout, a structure recalling the two original instruments tuned a fifth apart.

The work grows from a single D passed among the four protagonists. Neighboring tones gradually accumulate, opening onto a series of episodes — by turns dance-like, tender, violent — that remain harmonically static and non-developmental beneath their surface activity.

The first half subsides into a coda that quietly echoes the opening. The second half then breaks loose — ♩. = 88 accelerating to ♩ = 168 — through an antiphonal race, a raucous dance, and whirlwinds that coalesce into majestic chords, slowly resolving into a rough retrograde of the opening — a wide ambitus contracting into a narrow register punctuated by long silences.

Also available for violin and viola and string quartet.

Details

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