Drifts, for string quartet (2017)
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about Drifts
Drifts is a set of five short pieces for string quartet, written for the JACK quartet in the winter of 2016/2017. The first of the five pieces, Florescences, was originally written for Quatuor Bozzini in 2011 and has been lightly revised and treated as the departing point for Drifts. While these five pieces were envisioned as a set and are ideally played together, each one can may be played seperately as a stand-alone piece.
These pieces explore the idea of “tonal drift,” which is the result of modulation in a just intonation context. In 12-tone equal temperament, a series of modulations by a just major third will cycle back to the initial key after three modulations. However, the same number of modulations by the just major third will result in landing roughly a quarter-tone below the initial tonal center, having drifted away from an equal temperament tonic.
Drifts takes several approaches to tonal drift, with each piece focusing in on a different type of cadential movement to create the sense of modulation. The first movement, Florescences, works with a standard tonal V-I classical cadence, modulating to the just minor seventh repeatedly. The second movement, Phrygia, reinterprets the basic idea of a Phrygian cadence, with various small just intervals heard in place of the usual semitone movement of the flat second to the tonic. The third movement, Organum, draws upon early polyphony, focusing on parallel fourths and creating a sense of cadence through movement to the octave in first species counterpoint. The fourth movement, Floria, plays with florid two-part counterpoint, functioning as a kind of fast movement in the overall form of Drifts and also relying upon the octave as a way to suggest a tonal center. The fifth and final movement, Ars Nova, reworks cadences from the Ars Nova period.