String quartets: musique concrete edition

Steve Reich's Different Trains for string quartet, effects and taped voice kind of fits this, also because many of the string parts are transcribed from recorded speech. Perhaps Stockhausen's Kontakte also fits.

Not familiar enough w/modern classical to know if str quartets are used more today than the orchestra. If it's true, then perhaps it's an interest in downsizing the perspective, like a scientist interested in studying subatmoic particles.

I've read string quartets are one of the hardest forms of classical music to master, i think because you have to use only the tonalities and voices you have at your disposal to convey a huge range of emotion/sonic effect. If I was writing a str quartet, one way I might go about it is to narrow down my "subject matter", and drill as deeply down into the idea as possible, trying exploit even the most trivial aspects of it in my piece. It seems to me symphonies and large scale orchestral pieces are more interested in expanded ideas rather than peering down and deconstructing them, and again it seems like that kind of reductionism fits the string quartet better. I know I must be over-generalizing here tho.

'Kontakte' isn't a str quartet

I'd agree, if by 'downsizing', you mean its easier to find smaller instr groups that might be interested in newer compositons although i wonder if instead its something about this older form that its simply played out but that its just not the case for this old form we're comparing to -- or even if i'm wrong anyway and there's quite a lot of orchestral works out there so the fault lies in my 'surveys'.

Another one i thought about ws Klaus Lang -- he does that atomization of sound thing, and that's concrete-like, i suppose.

I can think of many chamber music pieces that augment the acoustic sounds into a hyperorchestra but I can't think of too many pieces that limit themselves explicitly to the string quartet

The ones that come to mind don't transform the sounds as much as multiply & layer them -- John Oswald's "Spectre" (thin drone building to an overpowering wail), Phil Niblock's "Four More String Quartets" (sounds like Phil), Horatio Radulescu's "String Quartet No. 4" (long piece with huge dynamic range skittering through many moods -- recorded by Arditti for Editions RZ) -- all three pieces are great.

One thing all three of them have in common is Spectralism -- when you start multiplying open strings like that, you're almost forced to compose for the overtones. Radulescu's a card carrying member, Oswald's title may have been a reference, Niblock's a school of one working intuitively but the piece still belongs.

Kronos albums are littered with pieces with added parts for tape -- the two weirdest Kronos albums are Black Angels and Short Stories, the latter has the Oswald piece.

(add: the Niblock piece is of course a piece for string quartet with a prerecorded tape of four other quartets, the Radulescu piece is the same except the tape layers seven other quartets)

Oh, there's that Marco Stroppa piece for "electronically spatialized" string quartet. (pauses to Google it) Spirali

Program notes in French

I'm sorry, i was thinking of the quartet he did for players in a helicopter. Anyway, by downsizing, i'm thinking literally of a reduce in physical scope. I think there is something inherently more intimate about str quartets than symphonic works, and even grappling with the same ideas, it is like hearing a group of 4 friends discuss/argue/expand on the issues vs seeing the movements of celestial bodies and and an almost super-human sense of drama. Actually, when thinking about augmenting string quartets electronically, it seems like a very nice parallel of the augmention of people w/electronic media (biological or info-based).

(...and, uh, might explain a renewal of interest)

(oh and please forgive gratuitous theorizing, I just got finished with this McLuhan book)

Which book is that?

Radulescu ws another one i forgot about..

Dominique OTM

Following the intimacy/augmentation line, Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study II, for solo cellist (plus electronics and three assistants) deserves a mention.

I also remember seeing a video of a string quartet in which all the players were hooked up to brain wave monitors; the read out from these was fed in real time to screens for each performer (of their own brain wave patterns), which they then used as a graphic score to play from. This in turn altered their brain wave patterns, and so a sort of weird feedback loop was set up. I can't remember who this was though - Lucier perhaps?

"wd you all agree that composers today engage much more w/str quartets than sonatas or the symphonic orchestra"

The thing about a string quartet is that it's the only one really of the 'old forms' of instrumental music (symphony, sonata, concerto, etc.) that has retained a certain amount of currency. Although 'string quartet' is just a description of the performers required, it's also a historical label that places you in the same line as Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert. And although people do still write symphonies and sonatas, it's perfectly possible to write a piece for orchestra or solo instrument and not call it a symphony or a sonata. But string quartet pieces are somehow always involved in that history - which makes them so problematic, and so tempting for composers. I don't know if composers are engaging more with string quartets than symphony orchestras today (that would depend on which sector of contemporary music you were surveying, I suspect), but I think there remains more life in the 'string quartet' as a formal ideal than in the 'symphony' or the 'sonata'.

Had a look for the brain wave patterns - Lucier has composed one item like that but its for solo performer, as far as i could see. As for 'time and motion II' i've heard it but the three assistants don't come across in this recording i have (guess i'm not expecting it to, exactly) - thought that the cellist somehow used certain pedals, so seeing it performed is a must. The same wd apply w/symphonic forces, its hard to tell what the numbers involved are when you're faced w/ a mere recording...from my surveying, its my impression there are more works for a mid-sized ensemble of, say, 10-30 players.

I think the three assistants mostly work the mixing desk, and there might be some live effects as well that go beyond the pedals, I'm not sure (I've not seen it either).

Yeah, definitely large chamber ensembles rule the roost - but I think that's mostly down to really good specialist groups like the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble InterContemporain, BCMG and so on who have the commissioning power and concert schedules to shape things to that extent. (Although groups like this came about to start playing a growing important repertoire of mid-sized pieces - Webern's Concerto, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Boulez' Les Marteau, etc etc). So yeah, it's not so much downsizing, more that the middle ground between small chamber works and large symphonic pieces is one of the main focuses of attention.