Hèctor Parra Esteve (1976)

Stasis - Antigone I (2002)

for string quartet

  • General information
    • Composition date: 2002
    • Duration: 7 mn
    • Publisher: Editorial Tritó, Barcelone
Detailed formation
  • 1 violin, 1 second violin, 1 viola, 1 cello

Premiere information

  • Location:

    Centre Acanthes 2002, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, Festival d'Avignon 2002


    Performers:

    Arditti String Quartet

Program note

Stasis - Antigone I, for string quartet, constitutes the gate of the Antigone Cycle. This Cycle comprises four vocal and instrumental pieces scored for different chamber music ensembles.

They are issued from a reflection around Sophocles' tragedy and the dynamical characteristics associated to the time flow in the Greek Tragedy.

The first section of Stasis exposes, in a sequential manner, all the basis materials present in the cycle. The timbrical net of relationships established between these materials, even those relating sequentially separated materials, will be the basis of the vertical relationships imposed in the second section. These new vertical relationships, which are stated in a framework of progressive fragmentation, imply an exhaustive deconstruction of the initial processual nucleus and a simultaneous dissolution of the string quartet as instrumental group.
In the third and last section new textural relationships are again imposed in order to reconduct the musical discourse from the climax of the deconstruction to a sequential resolution. In this resolution all the energy and tensions present in the first section, and which have been "suspended in the air" during the second one, achieve finally an equilibrium state or "stasis".

Hèctor Parra, 2002