Neologistics→ Music → Selah → The Compositions Begin → String Quartet 1960 |
This is a section about a third of the way into a String Quartet
I wrote in 1960. It used odd meters in places such as 5/12 (not
shown here). Even though I also wrote a one-measure slow
movement (really slow!), I have never really counted
this work as a real string quartet because I never wrote a third
movement, so considered it unfinished, and never even attempted
to get a reading of it.
I'm not sure why I was so quick to poo-poo this piece. On review
I find that it is longer, more ambitious, and more carefully
written than almost anything else I did in high school. The
experiment with rhythm, although I never went further with it,
was forward looking, and was rooted in the same kind of thinking
that produced Elliott Carter's technique of rhythmic modulation,
which I knew nothing about at the time.