Don't Just Sit There and Pretend Everything's Fine

Written in 2017 for String Quartet

At the time I wrote this, I had recently taken an interest in creating literal, proportional, translations of visual art into musical mediums. For Don’t Just Sit There and Pretend Everything’s Fine, I was interested in mathematical and rhythmic proportions found in the linear styles of the High Renaissance, in particular, Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna. Although this piece is not about the painting, I looked back to the church music of the same period to find a referential similarity to the visual style. Additionally, I found the time-ridden decay of these near-ancient arts an interesting element in their structures (although these were never intended). To reconcile these ideas, I initially began this piece by writing my own chant-style music using modern set collections then stripped them down to their component parts and pushed them into the background as faded tapestries.

Structurally speaking, the piece fallows the elements of the painting quite literally. I took a ruler and mapped out sections of the painting, taking into consideration the background the furniture of the painting, the subjects, the people represented, etc. While this was a fun and interesting way to setup a piece and a way to think about form and proportion and a way to study visual art, the piece got a little tedious after a while. I’m not sure if that was my impatience speaking or if the materials themselves don’t sustain the piece for 10 minutes, but I felt like the piece needed a little something more- some grit, or some energy. I think this moment is pretty evident if you listen to the piece above, but what you’re hearing is approximately everything in the piece condensed down into a few moments.  

I wrote this piece for an internal call for scores at Bowling Green State University when we hosted the Rhythm Method as guest artists- I love what these folks do, and I listen to their A Very Wandelweiser Christmas every year- and “officially” this is my “first string quartet.” Although there were numerous pieces and experiments from undergrad, this was the first piece that I felt confident about and that I felt actually had some merit. Still, it kept coming up again and again with my professors and with my friends that there is some weird pressure when writing a string quartet. I think this is a feeling that stems from a perception of the weight of “great composers” of the past and how they had established a precedent for the importance of the genre. Perhaps I was ignorant to history or still in my contrarian phase, but I never felt this pressure while writing this piece. Still, I think the idea itself is interesting and worth unpacking… once my dissertation is published, I’ll direct you toward a 100-page document the covers my thoughts on this, but the shorter version sounds something like “tradition is valuable, but don’t let it be peer-pressure from dead people.” I love string quartets; you don’t need to feel obliged to carry a torch- just write a cool piece.