Intricate Machines
Commissioned by Saarbrücker Somermusik for the Tsanevski Quartett
With additional support for Aizuri Quartet U.S. Tour from New Music USA, Aaron Copland Fund, Amphion Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund, and Weis Center for the Performing Arts.
Instrumentation String Quartet
Duration 15'
Program Notes
Intricate Machines (2016; rev. 2018) was commissioned for the Tsanevski Quartet by the Saarbrücken Somermusik festival in Germany. The piece is sort of a meta-commentary on musical hybridism, taking inspiration from my teenage years as a punk-rock drummer, and transforming those energetic impulses and sounds into the tight, interlocking, world of the modern string quartet. At moments, the rhythmic chuggings of Metallica and Bartok seem to collide, while at other times insistent open-string grooves could alternatively reference folk fiddling or the funk of an Incubus song.
In five movements, we hear punk dissonance (“Heavy-Metal Viola”), strange nocturnal sounds (“Bump in the Night”), mechanistic repetition (“Churning Gears”), celestial resonance (“Constellations”), and finally a capricious dance (“Interstellar Hoe-down”). The result is Intricate Machines, one of my strangest, most playful, and yet totally earnest works.
— Daniel Temkin
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