Bozzini Quartet

Program Notes

Taylor Brook
Vinetan Songs (2025)The title refers to the myth of Vineta, a sunken city in the Baltic that was first written about by Ibrahim ibn Jaqub around 965 a.d. I imagine the music of Vineta and compose in a way that aspires to the richness and variety of structures, signs, and techniques that develop over generations in a musical tradition. This conception of writing music in an imaginary tradition demands that I reconsider and reinvent musical traditions familiar to me and question the basic assumptions and values they carry. How are instruments played? What is the social purpose of the music? How are cultural concepts reflected in the music?

The myth of Vineta often appears as an allegory for excess, a decadent city punished by the tides, and I imagine the music that could have existed there—a set of seven ‘songs’, three for dance and four for contemplation. These seven songs are a coherent set, but each can be considered as standing alone and representing a different genre of music from Vineta:

1. Song of Loss
2. Stupor Dance
3. Trance
4. Round Dance
5. Body Song
6. Puzzle Dance
7. Chorus

Some of these songs take known musical cultures and works as a starting point. Song of Loss uses a melodic fragment from a Sardinian lament and Puzzle Dance is based on the rhythmic complexity of ars subtilior, a complex musical style of the fourteenth century. Others take their basis elsewhere. Stupor Dance is imagined as a music used to sweat out poison, alcohol, or narcotics, and Trance explores the subtleties of repetition and difference to evoke a half-waking state.

Zosha Di Castri
Delve (2025)

Delve reaches inside, searching, digging deep, like the excavation of a tunnel or the exploration of an obscure cave. As we move further in, the sound is transformed through the coloristic possibilities of mutes made of different weights and materials (leather, rubber, metal), each leaving its distinct imprint on the sound. Exploring moments of both great intimacy as well as unbridled power, the music emerges at last, full-bodied and unrobed.

With gratitude to the Bozzini Quartet for their partnership, collaborative spirit, curiosity, and highly specific sound.

Cassandra Miller
Three Songs (2025)

Three Songs is about the joy of learning new things about old friends. This piece is a continuation of a long friendship with the Quatuor Bozzini which began in 2009. When we started working on this piece, I asked the quartet many questions, including what songs they sang as children, or perhaps to their children. To these and other questions, I was delighted to understand that there was so much about my old friends that I didn’t yet know—and I was reminded of the poem “The Whistler” by Mary Oliver where she writes about learning with surprise that her wife of thirty years can whistle (“as from the throat of a cheerful bird, not caught but visiting”).

These three French and Italian folk / campfire songs were sung to me by the quartet members, and I have treated them almost as lullabies—thinking about how it feels to sing to a child or friend, about how it is not only comforting for the receiver but also for the singer. I started by transcribing their singing, and I zoomed in on the elements that had to do with the feeling of rocking, holding, or consoling. These elements then repeat around and around until they can be heard out of context, as if anew. “I know her so well, I think. I thought. . . . Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years? This clear, dark, lovely whistler?”