EDUARDO AGUILAR
HYPER (2021)
hyper-(prefix): excess; over; beyond; above
HYPER is a movement design that produces sound energy. I try to form a continuous object in which the sound material evolves through the design of the physical forces that produce it. The result is a fusion of sound and movement; forces that move in a fast and excited way. Thus, although the configuration seeks the sound, it (the configuration) exceeds it (the sound and its perception).
In the HYPER score I propose a new model for movement writing. This writing mode allows the representation of the spatio-temporal reality at the necessary resolution (adjustable) to accurately write and read the movement that evolves sound. HYPER explores an idea of coherence in time-space; of unfolding in “space-sound”; of take-off in “sound-air”; of friction in “air-nothing”; of overflow in “nothing-all(one)”. The movement of the quartet pushes towards the over-concentration of a single energetic entity (a sort of perpetual circuit where all the energy tries to concentrate inside), looking for a hyper-approach to movement, looking for the finest occupation of space-time … until breaking it, until losing it, until exceeding it … until contacting its nothingness.
HYPER is a continuous gesture of energy. It is driven by a tangible force but manifests itself as ethereal— like the light of a nonexistent object. It unfolds radiantly in the environment, but subjected to the limits of the space-time continuum, as the green ray to the axis from a laser beam. It rides to its own explosive disintegration but situated for a marginal perception — like posthumous fumes from the inner chemistry in a pyrotechnic device. It fades between eye and ear to appear in the memory … it structures itself on memory like the flashing architecture of a cuete (a fireworks display), it perpetuates itself in the nothingness … as space impossible to occupy.
— Eduardo Aguilar
SEARE FARHAT
Aporias (2023)
I will prove my right to contradiction is my own, or so I have told myself.
I. Occursus, a joining. Cum disiunctae ab invicem voces et concorditer dissonant et concordant said Guido, and so I learned to do so and promptly forgot. So will you.
II. Allah, هُوَٱلظَّهِرُ وَٱلْبَاطِنُ , both hidden and manifest. There is no outside-text, said Jacques, il n’y a pas de hors-texte. Or is that there is nothing outside the text, said Gayatri. I heard it both ways, and so promptly forgot both. And so will you.
III. A song with no end, آهنگ بی زمان, or maybe my favorite song. So much so I forgot how so I like it, and so I forgot to say so, and so will you.
— Seare Farhat
JURI SEO
Three Imaginary Chansons (2024)
Three Imaginary Chansons are inspired by the speculative music of the late Medieval Ars subtilior, in which the refinement of notation led to an unprecedented rhythmic complexity. I wanted to extend the same kind of exercise to pitch, utilizing the new intervals of extended just intonation.
The first song, Descent of Serpent, opens with a series of harmonic shifts downward by justly tuned minor thirds, overshooting the octave by “the greater diesis,” about 62 cents. The following section erupts in bitonality a diesis apart. The song roughly follows the rondeau form, A-B-A-A-B-A-B, with textual variations reinterpreted as musical variations.
The second song, Swan Song, is inspired by lute music. The ending descent is marked by a series of septimal commas, symbolizing a sinking heart and dying breaths.
The third song, Confronted Cocks and Running Dogs, takes its name from an elaborate Byzantine tapestry dating from the 4th-6th centuries. The symmetrical image is striking in its invocation of vigor, violence, and speed. The song unfolds in a quasi-virelai form, following roughly the number of syllables and rhyme schemes of virelai, a form of medieval French verse. Most of the materials are presented in hockets.
Three Imaginary Chansons were written in the winter of 2023/2024 for the JACK Quartet’s program Modern Medieval.
— Juri Seo
ANTHONY CHEUNG
Twice Removed (2024, world premiere)
I. Stretto House (after Steven Holl/Béla Bartók)
II. 830 Fireplace Road (after John Yau/Jackson Pollock)
III. Meditation on Motion (after Dean Rader/Cy Twombly)
IV. Journey to Mount Tamalpais (after Etel Adnan)
Twice Removed is a series of double-reflections, four musical responses to artworks that are themselves responses to other pieces. The practice of ekphrasis, or describing/evoking another work of art through a different medium, undergoes a further transformation in each of these movements. Sometimes a trace of the original remains through conscious or even subconscious allusions, whereas others have been filtered into something very different. How much of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, the inspiration behind architect Steven Holl’s 1991 Stretto House in Dallas, is carried over into this new reflection? The stretto device in music (a contrapuntal technique of close, imitative entrances) finds its way into the “aqueous space” of Holl’s design and the overlapping curvilineal metal overhead, contrasting with orthogonal blocks that divide each section.
In 830 Fireplace Road, John Yau — long known for donning the twin hats of poet and art critic — riffs on and reorders a sentence of Jackson Pollock: “When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing.” The 14 lines form a set of variations, an unconventional take on the sonnet, where words and meaning collapse into pure rhythm and sound. Reaching back to the source, Pollock’s drip technique has some bearing on the timbres of the instruments here. A continuous line that traces itself into white circles on a gray canvas forms the unforgettable image of Cy Twombly’s painting Cold Stream. And Dean Rader, in his volume of ekphrastic Twombly-inspired poems Before the Borderless, writes in “Meditation on Motion”: “The line like the river does not know to stop/neither does my wonder/I would like these lines to be drawn on my skin/I would like to feel these lines beneath my skin...”
Finally, the last movement is quite different in mood and source. It reflects on moments, both verbal and visual, from Etel Adnan’s Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), a longform meditation on and paean to the highest peak in the Marin Hills, which for Adnan represented a kind of transcendental beauty that she tried to capture in writing, drawing, and painting over several decades. In it, she writes, “I make paintings and watercolors of Tamalpais. Again and again. Why do I insist? Am I trying to hold some image, to capture some meaning, to assert its presence, to measure myself to its timelessness, to fight, or to accept? … Tamalpais has an autonomy of being. So does a drawing of it. But they are mysteriously related.” So too is a piece of music that engages with both of them.
— Anthony Cheung
Twice Removed was commissioned by JACK Quartet with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, 92nd Street Y, and Wigmore Hall. It is dedicated to the musicians of JACK with immense gratitude and in celebration of the group’s 20th anniversary.
JACK Quartet gratefully acknowledges the following funders and institutions for their support of JACK Studio: The 92nd Street Y, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Amphion Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund, Fan Fox & Samuels Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Marsha Gray, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA’s Organization Fund 2024-25, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Potash Hill, and Rita Schaefer in honor of Michael Schaefer.