Chamber music performances have often been described as musical “conversations between friends,” so today’s offering might be said to bring contemporary language into the classical discussion. The following are excerpts from the composer’s own notes on the quartet…

“I wrote this piece shortly after graduating from college, recently having played Bartók’s fourth string quartet, and leaving my rock band after two years. Although it is divided into four distinct sections (an introduction and three movements), my quartet is continuous from start to finish. The movement titles are a little misleading – each movement changes so much that it is difficult to label – but they may help a listener to know when one ends and the next begins.

“Despite its variety of styles, the piece is unified by a number of recurring motifs and ideas; a rising diminished triad. For example, is the basis for the main theme of each movement. The piece is structured in a roughly symmetrical way; the first and last movements are related harmonically, and they develop similar material. The second movement has a middle section that is the heart of the piece.”

Composer and ‘cellist Clancy Newman is the newest member of the Chicago String Quartet. Born in 1977 in Albany, New York, he began playing ‘cello at the age of six, and at twelve won the Gold Medal for Strings at an Australian youth festival, competing against instrumentalists twice his age. That was the first in a long list of awards, including his being a Walter W. Naumburg Competition winner. His interests are wide-ranging, and in May, 1999 he graduated with a BA in English from Columbia University, where he was a student in the exchange program with the Juilliard School. He began writing music at an early age, and he remains active in the realms of both performance and composition.

Part of Mr. Newman’s musical outlook is to be found in the following quote from him: “As a ‘cellist, I’ve played a lot of great music, from Bach’s time until the present day. Part of the process of learning and performing music, whether it is by an old master or a new hopeful, is to throw yourself at the core of the piece and feel the passion of its creation as if it were your own. Having done this for my entire musical life, I feel intimately connected with composers who came from vastly different times and places, even some who despised each other’s music. As a composer myself, I find it impossible to turn my back on one style as if it is not ‘me’; the result is that my music incorporates all the styles I have inhabited in the course of my life.”

Clockwise from top left: Rami Solomonow, Jasmine Lin, Clancy Newman, Joseph Genualdi

The Chicago String Quartet was founded in 1995 as the quartet-in-residence of the Chicago Chamber Musicians. In addition to its subscription series in Chicago, the CSQ tours frequently.

Please visit our 2008 artist biography page to read more about these performers.

-

Sometimes, the thought of “new music” intimidates us (Will we ”understand” it?); sometimes we take a belligerent, “show me” attitude toward it (Has this composer gone too far!). Perhaps, at our best, we open our minds and hearts to experience something new and accept it for what it is, namely the honest artistic expression of any serious composer, speaking musically from his or her heart and craft.

A few people whose names you probably know have some interesting things to say about the whys and wherefores of contemporary composition in any age:

“I don’t choose what I compose. It chooses me.” - Gustav Mahler

“We have a duty towards music, namely to invent it.” - Igor Stravinsky

“We look for new sonorities, new intervals, new forms. Where it will lead, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. It would be like knowing the date of my death.”
- Pierre Boulez

“There are a million things in music I know nothing about. I just want to narrow down that figure.”
- André Previn