Sibyl Tones (String Quartet No.1)
for String Quartet (2004)
“Barnson’s Sibyl Tones feels as much like a starting point as it does an arrival. The music is obscured and muted, off-color and tinny, like a scene captured on an archival photograph. It feels like an echo, and rightfully so– the work is loosely based upon a centuries-old work by Orlando di Lasso. Despite this culling of material, there is a sense that Barnson’s source has not been modified so much as it has smudged, written-over, and nearly-buried in swathes of original gestures. At just 5 minutes long, the work covers an incredible amount of timbral ground, presenting ample musical ideas with the potential to be explored further.”
Duration: 5 minutes
Instrumentation: 2vn.va.vc
Availability: Score and Parts for Sale
Buy the Album: Here
Program Notes
Premiere: December 6, 2004 at Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Arditti Quartet.
Sibyl Tones is almost unmistakably the work of a string player, insofar as the precision with which each instrument is abused bespeaks a high level of intimacy with the feel of bow and fingers against the string. It is as if each note were not sounded, but meticulously sounded around: the bow too close to the bridge or too far away, drawn too faintly or crushed into the string; the fingers pressed too lightly against the string or trilled furiously upon it or both at once.
More than any overdetermining system, Sibyl Tones is governed by the physicality of the instrument, and each short section is marked by the gradual introduction of different playing techniques: glassy harmonics, skittish string-crossings, snap pizzicato, and finally a climax of brutal sawing, before the piece resolves once more to an uneasy calm.
- Daniel Stephen Johnson