Hèctor Parra Esteve (1976)

Fragments on Fragility (2009)

string quartet n°2

electronic work

  • General information
    • Composition date: 2009
    • Duration: 13 mn
    • Publisher: Editorial Tritó, Barcelone
    • Commission: WDR-Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik pour le quatuor Arditti
    • Dedication: quatuor Arditti
Detailed formation
  • violin, second violin, viola, cello

Premiere information

  • Date: 25 April 2009
    Location:

    Allemagne, Witten, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik


    Performers:

    le quatuor Arditti.

Information on the electronics
Electronic device: temps réel

Table of contents

  • I- Breath
  • II- Roughness
  • III- Stifled Lyricism
  • IV- Particles
  • V- Strings
  • VI- A voice
  • VII- From within

Program note

Fragments on fragility is an exploration of an intimate relationship between the glottal impulses of the human voice and the vibratory states of the string instruments of the Quartet. Along the successive fragments, different ephemeral states of equilibrium or symmetry appear as germinal vortices for the creation of new languages. Their frailty beauty is rooted in the physical impossibility for these new languages to acquire stability and consistence throughout a sustained temporal development.

Thus the Quartet as a whole becomes a phoning (hyper)-organ that is set into action by the air flux (I-Breath): the breathy sounds produced by the friction between the bow and the wood, or by the fact of playing sul ponticello, will be carved in their tiniest temporal scale by a multitude of fricative consonantal electronic filters. A dense and spiky sound matter quickly emerges and the plosive consonantal filters bend and warp the sound of the string quartet. Now (II-Roughness) the diction is abrupt and dramatic, as a thought that strives for its expression in a language still in process of construction. A first attempt emerges as an ascending chant for the violoncello and 1st violin (III-Stifled Lyricism). This essay, however, will remain suffocated because the impossibility of a plentiful expression under the abysmal pressures of the sound écrasé, and also because of the insufficient vibration of the string produced by the legno of the bow. At this point the tiniest microscopic articulations of the bow (IV-Particles) appear as a last resort. An upsurge of legno jeté floods the sound space. Each sound particle is in fact a tiny vibration that takes the silhouette or profile of a consonant. Their interlocking at extreme speed gives birth to a whole set of stridences that interweave a discourse that not only intermingles independent melodical lines, but also extends its action to instrumental sound structures possessing a characteristic timber quality. V-Strings submits to an evolving process this melodic and timber substances in such a way that all the states of the sound matter (fragments) presented before converge in a joint articulation, conferring to the timber-texture polyphony a quasi vocal character (VI- A voice). The resulting electronic aura will be the emergent fruit of an inner voice (VII-From within): the voice that expresses the last reality of the musicality of the interpreters and their physico-musical gestures. The dynamical envelopes of the Quartet will finish to give structure and shape to the vibrant electronic flux.

Hèctor Parra, March 2009.