The Story

We're born. We grow. First steps lead to first words. We learn. We learn to work with others. Together we build. Structures rise. We travel to the moon. Yet at the same time, there's continual poverty. Destruction of our planet. And there's always the next war. We die. And then the cycle continues through our sons and daughters. We are people.

The Composition

The composition mirrors the story, in ways. It starts with sound effects in the violin; sputterings. A lonely viola line introduces a pulsing rhythm. The cello hints at a melody. In a fit of sonic melding, the entire quartet shifts up a quarter-tone and finally we arrive at a proper melody. The melody gets repeated, each time its surroundings more developed. The melody morphs into a motive that leads to a section of counterpoint. The counterpoint turns to poly-rhythmic, minimalistic pulsing that inevitably ushers in the climax. The climax finds the cello uttering the opening viola pulses under the violins and viola lashing out a rhythmic motive that was introduced at the very beginning, the "sound effects". The cello enters as soft pulses. Over this, the violins and viola remember the main melody, but in a tempo and feel removed from the underlying cello pulses. A series of whistled motives pull the quartet down by microtones. One last statement of the melodic motive. The cycle starts again, but slowly fades out.

Concept

People is the next step in a cross-over style that combines classical "extended techniques" with elements of art-pop. The work uses aleatoric elements, chordal harmonies, de-tuning, poly-rhythms, poly-tempos, and uses the studio as an additional instrument. The quartet, at times, is double tracked; is layered with delay effects; and uses hard-panned, vocoder effects. The work was recorded as a quartet, but with each member in an isolation-booth, of sorts, to capture a very specific sound without abandoning the humanistic way a quartet performs live.