Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.
Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for review. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019
Last night here in Portland I heard the DaPonte String Quartet perform the newly-commissioned String Quartet (his first!) by David Del Tredici. Rather than attempt to launch a full scale discussion of the piece now I'd just like to urge anyone who's in NYC on this Friday to drop by Carnegie Hall and check it out.
It's a very ambitious, large-scaled (just over 30 minutes) work with deliberately odd proportions that are meant to evoke Opus 130. Rather than a fugue Del Tredici concludes his quartet with a perfectly relentless 20-minute Grosse Tarantella. Besides being a tour de force of quartet writing, the piece embodies many of the issues of style, history and influence that are often touched on here. I hope we'll have a chance to discuss it.
posted by Tom Myron
9:13 AM
