string quartet

8 minutes

neither serious/or, I take the liberty/of not writing to you/regarding my serious 'Variations' explores the idea of sight-reading and rehearsal as performance. Four members of a string quartet open a set of envelopes containing scores they have not seen before. The music inside is written according to the principles of a Classical period string quartet: it is in four movements (fast, slow, triple metre, fast), written in condensed sonata form, and contains material inspired by one of the opening bars of Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18, No. 2 in G major. Therefore, although the players do not know the music on the surface level, they may be familiar with it on some deeper level. They have two minutes to read through and rehearse each movement, as they would in any first rehearsal of a piece.

This piece was commissioned by the 840 concert series for the Manon Quartet.