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Shudder for string quartet (score and parts)

SQ2ESP
$50.00
In stock
1
Product Details

Shudder (String quartet) 7'

2015

Programme Note

I wrote Shudder in 2014-15 when I was first studying with Julia Wolfe. I was really interested in elevating texture as a material for composing, and I based the piece on an abstraction of the physical phenomenon of sleep myoclonus: the phenomenon of involuntary twitches or jerks which most often occur while we fall asleep or undergo anaesthesia.

When I was a child I experienced hypnagogic myoclonic jerks quite often while I was

drifting off to sleep. I would have the stomach-flipping sensation of falling. . . before suddenly jerking awake, and finding myself just where I’d been, flat on my back in bed.

When I was writing the piece I thought of these movements as interruptions in overarching, woven structural processes, punctuated by bolts of energy — or shudders.

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