Crosswinds (String Quartet No. 2)
Margaret Brouwer
About this work:
When I was a resident of Virginia, its traditional folk music, sometimes called oldtime music, piqued my interest in using oldtime music as the germ material for this string quartet. Without using actual folk tunes, the music grows from my basic impressions of and fascination with their flavor. Using as a springboard typical string playing techniques, characteristic pentatonic scales, spontaneous rhythms, etc., these motifs are transformed into my own personal expression. Crosswinds was commissioned by New York's Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse and premiered by the Chester String Quartet. One day, while admiring the work of American impressionist painter, John H. Twachtman, I was struck by the idea of using a background of short daubs of sound in the first movement, Blue Ridges, Dappled Sunlight, Mountain Waltz, similar to the tiny daubs of color which cover his paintings. Through this background, the "picture" of a melancholy waltz (fashioned in the "oldtime" style) could emerge just as the images emerge from the dots in the painting. The beautiful Shenandoah valley landscape became the background - the woods with sunlight streaking through the trees on hundreds of leaves covering the ground, the layered meadows, all surrounded by blue ridges - overlaid with a melancholy mood. As the waltz ends, the obscuring wash of tiny dots of sound continues, now with motives from the waltz. Through this a gradual transformation occurs. The slow movement, Dusk, portrays my reaction to the beauty of the landscape at dusk. The last movement – Oldtime Fiddles: High, Low, Lower, - attempts to capture the flavor and fun of old time fast music, presenting it in various forms of variation, while transforming the ideas into my own style of expression.
Available for sale: BR1001
Year composed: 1995
Duration: 00:12:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:String Quartet
Instrumentation: 2 Violin, 1 Viola, 1 Cello
Instrumentation notes: String quartet