Four-Fourty

Four-Forty was commissioned for the St. Lawrence Quartet to perform at the Vancouver Festival in August 2000. I was not very excited at the prospect of setting a string quartet against an orchestra. With the whole string section surrounding them, it would be hard to give the quartet real definition and the independence necessary for soloists. I decided that the members of the quartet would obtain greater identity if they were to enter individually, perhaps from different places.

The work opens with only the cellist on stage in front of the orchestra. After an opening elegy, which quickly accelerates in tempo, the cellist’s solo is echoed from the back of the hall by the first violinist, who enters playing and moves down the aisle. The second violinist is seated at the back of the string section and makes a startling display of suddenly standing up and playing an extended solo. The violist has been hidden in the percussion section playing a drum until suddenly the drumstick is thrown away and a viola is substituted. The theatricality of the first movement gives the quartet the personality necessary to survive the next two movements seated normally without being too submerged by the orchestra.

The title Four-Forty came to me when I totalled up the number of players that would be involved in the performance of the piece: four soloists plus forty in the chamber orchestra accompanying them. Since A440 is the frequency at which contemporary orchestras perform, the note A becomes the anchor note of the entire composition, returning frequently, and right to the end of the piece where it slowly evaporates in harmonics. R. Murray Schafer