Comments/Critiques/Rants about My String Quartet #5

[Jeff Harrington]

I just deleted Adam's last comment on my blog, which was a quote from Dennis Bathory-Kitsz about how these forums have no real criticism, but mere back-slapping. Rather than continue the passive/aggressive circus that my blog has become since a few folks attempted to 'intervene' in my continuing use of tonality, I've decided to invite comments and criticisms about the piece here, in a public setting. I don't want my announcement, on my blog, to be a forum for ad generis critiques of my style(s). It is disrespectful of the great performers and it's disrespectful to me.

Instead, let's talk about it here. Maybe a little steam needs to be let out. But please, critique the piece and not me! FWIW, and as I posted on my blog, when I announced the piece in 2001 on rec.music.compose, similar fireworks occurred. Just for fun here they are. Now, just for the record, I was being a little bit snide in my response, because the critic, orangie, had been attacking me for months and was frankly a little bit weird.

Announcement from 2001 for Tetra-Mnemosyne VII on rec.music.compose

For those that haven't heard the piece, it flirts with classical tonality from the 19th century from time to time and this seems to freak people out. Are these harmonic gestures week and inappropriate? Do they add anything to the piece? Do they weaken the piece? Do I integrate those harmonic gestures succesfully into the motoric processes? Do the transitions work between the different stylistic spheres? Whatever questions you can think of - go for it.

Here's the recording:

String Quartet #5 - Performed by Quatuor de Orchestre 2021 Live in ...

Here's the score:

Score to Harrington String Quartet #5

[Harriter88-aka terry harrington]

The "style Problem" (reenacted) from an earlier era projected on to one of the most (like Gershwin)ntelligencia maligned(& beloved) Composers ever.Tchaikovsky auditions for N.Rubenstein-a piece that was destined to become the most popular piano concerto ever written.I just love these movie scene illustration's.The Scene get's going about six minutes in.

[Steve Moshier]

I thought it had too much cowbell! :-)

Harriter88-aka terry harrington said:

LOL-Cowbell rules!


Glenn Weyant said:

nice but imho it needs more cowbell...
i got the boot from a local coffee shop this weekend.
after about a minute or the conversation begins.
when you connect people respond and you know it.
but most people sadly don't really know what they're hearing.
they've been programmed or branded with likes and dislikes.
so the mass public is not much of a barometer.
although i think it is the job of every musician/composer to educate whenever possible.
in the end all anyone can do is do what they do for real and let it go where it may.
that and more cowbell.

[Harriter88-aka terry harrington]

LOL,Aw c'mon Steve ya can never have too much COWBELL! p.s. really dig your Dorthy Parker song cycle,and that Kali piece had me rolling with joy.

[Steve Moshier]

I'm so glad you listened...thank you...the 'cowbell' thing really f****** funny...but there's some twisted truth in it

Harriter88-aka terry harrington said:

LOL,Aw c'mon Steve ya can never have too much COWBELL! p.s. really dig your Dorthy Parker song cycle,and that Kali piece had me rolling with joy.

[Steve Moshier]

It's the "Too Little or Too Much" syndrome.

[Harriter88-aka terry harrington]

Yes the Goldilocks Syndrome (i.e. "this is just right")could balance out the one you mentioned.p.s. does liquid Skin ever engage a Cowbell virtuoso?

[adam kondor]

I was shocked and dumbfounded to realize how badly (though unintentionally) I attacked Jeff. But I know one thing for sure: the truth is always on the side of the one who feels the pain, there is nothing to argue about it.
People easily take on the roles of the victim and the offender...

Just for the record, what I was INTENDED to say about the quartet: I felt some tension between the expressive, emotional "content" and the formal presentation. I had the feeling (and it was probably only my projection!) that there was something not fully developed in the course of the piece. I supposed that formal constrains lamed the expression. I might have been wrong. And sure, I was wrong in the way I was telling this.

This is the moral of the story: to destroy something is very easy and in most cases impossible to build anew. Learn from my example! :)

[Harriter88-aka terry harrington]

Just for the record folks,as a pianist i can honestly say that Jeff's Piano music is some of the most innovative(that communicates as well) stuff i have heard or come across being written today for my Ax.The fact that it's a body of material that i'm even remotely intrested in learning some of,speaks volumes for it.I'm currently working on his "BlueStrider",and it's a mother of a piece(Memory,Technically,feel etc),deeply rooted in the Blues,With touches of late Scriabin harmony-clusters(the opening c7 chord-for example-same one Scriabin uses in the opening of his 6th Sonata),and Bachian & pre-Bachian polyphony galore.
Most importantly it's a sound( in total) you ain't heard before.For me that's tops as far as achievement is concerned(esp today).One of the other current Composers who is writing Piano music that really captures audiences as well as Pianists,is the Russian Nikolai Kapustin's show pieces.But in my opinion Kapustin's sound is not truly authentic,it's a Jazz Hybrid-wonderful and effectivel as some of it is.It owes much to Chick,Bill and Oscar,as well as Rachmaninoff,Prokofiev and Scriabin.
As far as some of the other innovative Piano creators of the last thirty years (who also have-had a popular appeal so to speak),you have to go to jazz-post Evans & Monk.Tyner,Corea,lyle mays.Herbie,jarrett etc.I would also include Donald Fagan,and as a fourteen year old,without Keith Emerson(speaking for some of the music, and leaving aside all of his BS Showmanship shenanigans-antics),i would never have even gotten in to classical music.So a debt of gratitude is owed there.

Jeff has also written a bunch of preludes(#15 is my fave)and two other big works(all of which have outstanding momments) for solo Piano.His most recent Sonata # 3,is even more of a beast then BlueStrider.All right,enough horn tooting for JH.Finally,let me say,as one of those musicians(when i'm in re-creative mode),he speaks about being his prime intrest in attracting,(and from the looks of it there are many others)he has succeeded.

[John Mackey]

I have nothing negative to say about the harmonic language. I once heard a composer tell a student that he'd never talk about pitches with another composer because to whomever wrote the piece, those are the right notes, and they're personal. Regardless, I certainly don't have any problem with tonality, and this isn't all white-note music anyway.

I started listening to it before I read Jeff's description that it was inspired by middle period Beethoven quartets. I had gotten half-way through when I thought, "this structure and pacing feels just like late Beethoven." I'm not a big fan of the Beethoven quartets -- they go on a little long to me, and I prefer a stronger sense of committed, clear direction throughout -- but I'm obviously in the minority in that feeling. (It probably helps that I'm not technically capable of writing with this sort of structure, so kudos to Jeff for being able to approximate it this well. It's possible I don't like this sort of structure and pacing simply because I don't know how to do it.)

Since Jeff was after the mid/late Beethoven feel, I think the piece is successful at accomplishing what he was trying to accomplish. When I say that I don't love the pacing because it reminds me too much of Beethoven's pacing is not a negative, particularly since that was the explicit intent from the beginning. The beauty of it is that I'd never MISTAKE it for Beethoven; it's not derivative.

I like it best when it gets crunchy in the return of the faster 12/8 material through to the end. I think the transitions are really good. You can tell a good composer by their transitions. I wish the piece were tighter time-wise, or at least with another injection of the high-energy music in the middle. I really dug the beginning, but it made me think the piece was going to be something more minimalistic and rhythmically driving than it turned out to be. (When it started, I thought, "oh, this would work well with dance," but then it lost the driving pulse for such a long stretch.) I wish there were a bigger chunk of that great 12/8 stuff at the end somewhere in the middle, too, partially to keep more momentum and make the structure a little clearer, but also just because I liked that stuff best and wanted more of it.

[Jeff Harrington]

Thanks for the different analyses guys... Just for a bit of perspective - here's a piece I wrote as a grad student at Tulane in 1987. It is really trying to be in the late Beethoven style. It's pure pastiche - except for the obsessive rhythms here and there. This piece and the solo violin sonata are the only pieces from my pastiche period that I haven't destroyed (or thrown in some box for storage with a stupid plan that I'll one day fix them... heh.)

Variations for String Quartet - Performed by the First Monday Ensemble

One funny story about the premiere. As the audience was leaving, I heard someone say, "Now why can't composers write music like that these days..."

That's when I knew pastiche would never ever work. Time travel is not art. ;)

[John Mackey]

Jeff Harrington said:

That's when I knew pastiche would never ever work. Time travel is not art. ;)

I love this quote.

[Steve Layton]

I've said it before: your stuff always works best when it gets away from 2/4/8 squareness; when the phrase lengths and polyphony kind of say "screw the measure and the bar line". What counts are the accents; they become crucial! When it all comes together, like in "BlueStrider", "Gygr", "DeltaBandResonator", "Tcoupitoulas Byrd Song" and most of the "TetraMnemosyne" trios, it's a potent mix. Which is the one problem I have with the recording of this new quartet. You mention its intensity, and in some ways it is intense. But there's still slightly too much 'poise' and an evenness to the perf. There's a kind of boxing dance, fake and jab that needs to show up more strongly across the board. They don't have to be heavy; more just sharp and above all *sure*. I think part of that feeling comes from the jazz/blues root elements you've absorbed, which can be a difficult thing for players without that background to feel and use intuitively.


Jeff Harrington said:

Thanks for the different analyses guys... Just for a bit of perspective - here's a piece I wrote as a grad student at Tulane in 1987. It is really trying to be in the late Beethoven style. It's pure pastiche - except for the obsessive rhythms here and there. This piece and the solo violin sonata are the only pieces from my pastiche period that I haven't destroyed (or thrown in some box for storage with a stupid plan that I'll one day fix them... heh.)

Variations for String Quartet - Performed by the First Monday Ensemble

One funny story about the premiere. As the audience was leaving, I heard someone say, "Now why can't composers write music like that these days..."

That's when I knew pastiche would never ever work. Time travel is not art. ;)