Introspective Trilogy is a set of string quartets with electronics that examines inner emotional states through musical expression.
In Rage/Resolve, the most recent and final piece of the trilogy, I reflect on feelings of anger and frustration that arise from relentlessly bleak and seemingly unsolvable geopolitical conflicts, followed by a meditation on the internal resolution required to forge ahead in dark times without succumbing to despair. . . . This new work brings the trilogy full circle. The first piece, Undone, was commissioned by the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik and was composed in response to the outcome of the 2016 election and the rise of xenophobia and racism in the United States and Europe. My grandfather came to America in 1902 . . . leaving behind his parents and twelve brothers and sisters, most of whom were later murdered during the Holocaust. . . . As I composed the piece, my thoughts and emotions about my family’s past and contemporary events inevitably began to make their way into my music. Drawing on memories of my own bar mitzvah ceremony, I chose to incorporate references to Ashkenazic haftarah incantation (the way 13-year-olds chant sacred texts during their bar mitzvah) to honor my deceased family members. Those references, along with the more restrained material from earlier in the piece, yield and ultimately give way to the despair that I was feeling at the time. . . . Inward was my attempt to step back from politics and look inside myself in a more contemplative way. It begins with the idea of slowly shedding the noise around me and arriving at a meditative place of inner peace. It dwells on an unfolding series of resonant textures and harmonies that evolve very slowly until arriving at a place of quiet melancholy. Finally, there is Rage/Resolve. It begins with my attempt to transcribe a kind of silent scream and then bursts out with strident sound and relentless, chaotic energy. A quieter section of nervous muttering is then followed by the return of the strident material, as the quartet merges into an angry unison and the silent scream returns. The second part begins with an impassioned cello solo that carries forward as the other performers join a collective effort to find inner strength and seek to ward off despair. It stuns me how much the piece mirrors my emotional experience at this very moment.
In all three pieces, the musicians play into microphones. The signals are then routed through a computer running Miller Puckette’s Pd software. The sound of the instruments is transformed in various ways and then disseminated out of eight speakers located throughout the auditorium. This setup enables me to dynamically vary the acoustical conditions in which the audience hears the music, and to move the sound around the room, often following the dynamic shape of the musical gestures. Among the processes that I work with are resonant filters (a kind of simulated piano resonance provoked by the quartet), various delays and echoes, and just-tuned harmonizing that creates chords out of single notes. My goal is for these transformed sounds to merge with the natural, unamplified instrumental sound to produce a sonic fabric that is in constant transformation, bringing greater expressivity to the musical gestures.
Rand Steiger. A page from the score of Rage/Resolve
