String Quartet No. 2

(2021 – 2022)

Duration: c. 20 minutes

Commissioned by the Australian String Quartet for the London season of ANAM Quartetthaus through the Australian String Quartet Richard Divall Australian Music Fund

World premiere: 18 October, 2022, Adelaide Town Hall

Part One: an abnormality of growth

1. Andante amoroso
2. Scherzo I
3. Scherzo II (in imitazione) – Trio (senza energia) – Scherzo II (con difetti)
4. Finale I

Part Two: a continuity of paradoxes

1. Adagio inquieto
2. Scherzino interrotto
3. Adagio stagnante
4. Finale II
5. Finale III

These two movements pursue similar material from radically different perspectives. The first begins with a wide-ranging cello melody ornamented with a quicksilver muted violin mapping out the same harmonic landscape again and again, providing most of the work’s content in embryonic form. This then calms down into a true slow movement. The ‘abnormalities’ of this Part refer to the quirk of the material growing too quickly for a ‘normal’ development of the structure, forcing the music to change into radically different forms and expressions. Scherzo I alternates violence and entropy in an unstable manner before coalescing into the strict canons of Scherzo II. The dissipation of energy in this Scherzo generates a true Trio section, struggling to regain direction. Its eventual resumption (‘with defects’) menacingly grinds the music into mechanistic repetition and dissolution. Finale I polyphonically grows the fragments of the opening cello melody in multiple directions simultaneously, eventually proliferating and accelerating out of control.

Part Two’s ‘continuity of paradoxes’ attempts to force together music built on irreconcilable differences. It begins with a dyad slowly ‘bleeding out’ into uncomfortable fragments of faster music. These become the dominant idea and prepare the way for another Scherzo, this one cut into by windows to wholly opposing material. When this spins itself to quizzical extinction, the piece finds its still, Adagio centre – but it proves too slow for ‘productive’ development. Nervous repeated-note twitches finally provide the key to opening Finale II, a do-over of Finale I from Part One but in a far slower tempo. Many of the developmental ‘problems’ of the original are given potential solutions, and the entropic and oppositional forces are reconciled. The key out of the quartet-labyrinth is a third Finale for this two-movement work, gathering together the piece’s entire material in a fast toccata which nonetheless gets stuck on loop: is it resolved, finished or simply gives up?

WATCH Australian String Quartet’s performance at the Sydney Opera House

https://stream.sydneyoperahouse.com/videos/australian-string-quartet-performs-jack-symonds-string-quartet-no-2