Three Imaginary Chansons (2024) for String Quartet in 13-Limit Extended Just Intonation
Currently being presented by the JACK Quartet for their 2024-2025 concert season.
Enjoy a snippet of the Swan Song, the second movement.
Stay tuned for the recording.
Sample of the first page; the notation is in HEJI (The Helmholtz-Ellis Extended JI)
Program Note:
Three Imaginary Chansons are inspired by the speculative music of the late Medieval Ars subtilior, in which the refinement of notation led to an unprecedented rhythmic complexity. I wanted to extend the same kind of exercise to pitch, utilizing the new intervals of extended just intonation.
The first song, Descent of the Serpent, opens with a series of harmonic shifts downward by justly tuned minor thirds, overshooting the octave by "the greater diesis," about 62 cents. The following section erupts in bitonality a diesis apart. The song roughly follows the rondeau form, ABAABAB, with textual variations reinterpreted as musical variations.
The second song, Swan Song, is inspired by lute music. The ending descent is marked by a series of septimal commas, symbolizing a sinking heart and dying breaths.
The third song, Confronted Cocks and Running Dogs, takes its name from an elaborate Byzantine tapestry from the 4-6th century. The symmetrical image is striking in its invocation of vigor, violence, and speed. The song unfolds in a quasi-virelai form, following roughly the number of syllables and rhyme schemes of virelai. Most of the materials are presented in hockets.
Three Imaginary Chansons were written in the winter of 2023-2024 for the Jack Quartet for their program Modern Medieval. (J.S.)