Chamber music (2 violins, viola, cello)

In this piece, I tried an unusual way of composing for me. My modus operanda is, – somewhat tediously – to start writing music at the beginning of the piece and then pray that I reach the end before the concert organizer and players phone me to ask where the piece is and I have to say "it's almost done.....yeah, but I'm having issues with bar 32 and the C# in bar 45 is not quite there yet....

For this piece I knew that I was going to have a workshop with The Maggini String Quartet before finishing it. So I wrote 4 short fragments that are based on one harmonic field with transpositions, but contrasting in technique.
For example: on fragment was pizzicato with a lot of snap pizz, another solo arco+practice mute against pizz. tremolo, and another was solo aggitated pizzicato cello against static texture using practice mutes etc.

I video taped and recorded the workshop and a week later, having decided to forget about the fragments I composed, I started to edit the piece like a film. It was great fun, because I was happy with all of the fragments I had already composed; and they all have harmonic unity, I could just think about the pacing and flow of the piece.

Dai Fujikura.