String Quartet No.2 (2005)
Winner of the 2009 Left Coast Composition Prize.
Special Jury Selection for the 2006 ISCM World New Music Days (Stuttgart, Germany)
“Built almost entirely out of string harmonics and extended techniques, this is a strong and often fascinating work. Barnson’s work is fresh and arises from a distinct personality. While its starting point is the instruments’ sonority, the piece also maintains great momentum through an alternating exchange and layering of instrumental gestures, as well as a deft use of surprising silences.”
“String Quartet No. 2 is brilliantly colorful, shimmering, and strangely concordant even in its noisiest moments. I cannot resist thinking of this music as a kind of physical material, with filaments densely packed together that are slowly pulled apart to reveal single strands, only to be reassembled into beautiful layered patterns. ”
Duration: 10 minutes
Instrumentation: Two violins, viola, violoncello
Commissioned: by Centre Acanthes
Premiere: July 17, 2005; Arditti String Quartet. Arsenal Esplanade, Metz, France
Buy the Album: Here
Program Notes
String Quartet No. 2 is cut from the same cloth [as Sibyl Tones]. A virtuosic work of sonic hyperbole, it is constructed almost exclusively from natural and artificial harmonics, snap pizzicati, and noise. As in Sibyl Tones, string players negotiate fists full of fingers, changing degrees of pressure often and quickly to master simultaneous natural and artificial harmonic double-stops which form the harmonic core of both quartets. In Sibyl Tones, I imagined the sounds of glaciers thawing, cracking, melting, evaporating, and finally freezing again; in String Quartet No. 2, I imagined something different: a firestorm of tremendous force burning away dross and leaving behind a glass-smooth surface. - Matthew Barnson
Press
"The program included the winner of the ensemble’s 2009 composition prize, the String Quartet No. 2, by Matthew Barnson (a former Saariaho student), heard in its U.S. premiere. Built almost entirely out of string harmonics and extended techniques, this is a strong and often fascinating work. Although Barnson’s approach recalls a number of composers — Xenakis in particular, who wrote entire quartets based largely on unconventional sound sources — his work is fresh and arises from a distinct personality. While its starting point is the instruments’ sonority, the piece also maintains great momentum through an alternating exchange and layering of instrumental gestures, as well as a deft use of surprising silences.
Congratulations are due to the Left Coast players for choosing a competition winner that isn’t simply a showoff piece, but instead is full of unusual technical and aesthetic challenges that were expertly addressed." - San Francisco Classical Voice, April 5, 2010
“String Quartet No. 2 seems to take a small handful of these ideas present in Sibyl Tones and use them as a focal point. Although nearly twice the duration of its predecessor, this single-movement work feels leaner, digging deeper into the fabric of the ensemble’s sound. I cannot resist thinking of this music as a kind of physical material, with filaments densely packed together that are slowly pulled apart to reveal single strands, only to be reassembled into beautiful layered patterns. It is brilliantly colorful, shimmering, and strangely concordant even in its noisiest moments.” - I Care If You Listen October 1, 2015
“Ghostly, flitting motives and momentary sepulchral flickers give way to a relentless, slashing unison staccato passage that decays to atmospherics, lit up by the occasional screech or squall: it’s a vivid depiction of a firestorm.” - New York Music Daily, April 2, 2014