SKU: PR.164002720

UPC: 680160573042. 8.5 x 11 inches.

My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change.   I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]   The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla.   Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional.   II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts]   This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture.   This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream.   III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts]   The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this.   Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1.   String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.

SKU: SU.29120020

String Quartet No. 1 is a powerful and harmonically dynamic string quartet in four movements. It mixes both tonal and dissonant musical landscapes in an elegant way. The quartet may also be experienced as a kind of coming-of-age story. After the calm first movement’s confident simplicity of youth, the second movement reflects the increasing complications and conflicts of young adulthood, with fraught exploration, the discovery of possible romance, and new tensions now replacing the youthful calm. The third movement reflects on maturity and the experiences of love and loss, before the finale—a set of complex chromatic fugues—evokes the fight against fate and time to achieve one’s goals in life. The movement’s end briefly recapitulates the first movement, suggesting that ultimately life comes full circle as we see the totality of our experience. As LA Opus music critic, John Stodder, said about this work, The protagonist discovers the presence of life's purpose. String Quartet Duration: 19' Composed: 2019 Published by: Todd Mason.

SKU: BR.EB-9402

ISBN 9790004188767. 0 x 0 inches.

<> est la quatrieme piece (ou le quatrieme mouvement) de mon cycle <> pour quatuor a cordes, base sur les recherches recentes concernant le fonctionnement du cerveau. La piece s'inspire egalement de l'interpretation de la genese du monde telle qu'abordee dans les anciens livres japonais, ou la premiere divinite creee une deuxieme entite pensee comme un <>. C'est a partir de l'harmonie de ces deux etres que naitront par la suite les nombreux esprits lies a la cosmogonie japonaise. J'ai repris cette image dans ma piece, ou une sorte de note contenue dans l'ostinato percussif du violoncelle (<>) sera revelee progressivement par une note tiree et vibree au second violon. Cette vibration, qui s'accentue dans le discours devient a la fois une <> reprise par l'alto et des glissandi joues au premier violon. D'apres certaines etudes, le rythme et la melodie ne stimulent pas les memes zones du cerveau, cette construction permet ainsi l'emergence d'une communaute de quatre differentes personnalites qui s'observent les unes les autres ; elles arrivent a imaginer, a anticiper et meme a participer a la realisation des comportements des autres, par un processus propre au fonctionnement du cerveau nomme <>. (Misato Mochizuki, 2000)

World premiere: Luxembourg, Philharmonie, October 12, 2020 (Aris-Quartett) Commissioned by the ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation) for the Rising Stars-Project.