FRANK STEMPER, COMPOSER
String Quartet No. 1 (1982)
One Movement [13 mins.]
Intensely Dramatic
Composed in under support of the George Ladd Prix de Paris
Premiered by the Paducah Symphony String Quartet
Opus 9
SCORE
Premiered by the Paducah Symphony String Quartet
Opus 9
SCORE
PROGRAM NOTES:
As a young student, a self-taught Jazz piano player, hearing a string quartet, live, for the first time, changed my life. The Fine Arts Quartet playing Mozart caused an instant reaction within me. From that point forward, I was no longer interested in pursuing the piano or Jazz. I wanted to do what that bratty kid from Salzburg did a couple hundred years before, that these four middle-aged bespectacled men were recreating in Milwaukee Wisconsin, a couple hundred years later.
Initially, I was attracted to the artform: a three-tiered chain reaction: 1) a composer writes the basic rough form; 2) The musicians fine tune the written pages, adding their subtle interpretations, recreating the composer’s narrative; 3) Then the listeners do the third and final part, listening, each internalizing and embracing the composer’s statement in their own way.
If I could do that even once, my life would be a success.
But I was also enticed by the evolution of this art form. The composers who preceded Mozart, who one by one laid down new ideas, structures, diverse instrumental sounds, harmonic and rhythmic nuances, allowing Mozart to write the way HE did. And the composers who followed him, who continued to evolve music. This is art, but it’s also science. It’s scholarly work if there ever was: Digesting the the current body of knowledge in a particular field - Chemistry, Mathematics, History, Painting, AstroPhysics, etc. Then using the past advances to influence future advances. And so on.
This is what I was thinking about when I was a young composer. I felt it was my job to push music’s boundaries. I thought that was every composer’s duty, originality and invention. That composing within the norm was merely “rewriting.” Yet, in order to accomplish all that I have just espoused, one must certainly have a one foot planted in the past, balancing as the other foot lunges forward. It is a complicated conundrum, and, like any attempted description of art, nonsense.
I wrote my first quartet while living in England and France on a Ph.D. post doc from the University of California – Berkeley. I spent most of my time composing, but also a lot of time contemplating how I was going to alter the path of MUSIC. In England we (my wife and two small children) lived on the Coast of the North Sea in a little town, Brancaster Staithe. I composed at the home of Lady Margaret Douglas-Home. She was royalty and the widow of a former Prime Minister of England! More importantly, she had a piano, which I needed in order to compose. Then, in Paris’s 14th Arrondissement, I composed in the baby’s room. But I spent a lot of time walking the streets of Paris and as I did along the coast of the North Sea. I was looking for something. Nonsense.
String Quartet (No. 1) is the result. I think it’s impossible to perform, although the Paducah Symphony String Quartet gave it a try. Sorry fellas. I think this means that it’s also impossible to listen to. But Milton Babbitt suggested “Who Cares If You Listen?” It’s still a controversial notion. As still that self-taught jazz piano player, my ears are my composing tools. I listen. And I write for the listener, absolutely. But I am baffled by my 1st quartet.
I am currently in the 3rd life of my composing mission. I’ve written two string quartets in the past year and am planning my 5th. However, I am determined to make my 1st quartet a reality. I am going to get back into my 1982 head so I can understand. Then I will rewrite No. 1 to become my 3rd quartet. Stay tuned.
As a young student, a self-taught Jazz piano player, hearing a string quartet, live, for the first time, changed my life. The Fine Arts Quartet playing Mozart caused an instant reaction within me. From that point forward, I was no longer interested in pursuing the piano or Jazz. I wanted to do what that bratty kid from Salzburg did a couple hundred years before, that these four middle-aged bespectacled men were recreating in Milwaukee Wisconsin, a couple hundred years later.
Initially, I was attracted to the artform: a three-tiered chain reaction: 1) a composer writes the basic rough form; 2) The musicians fine tune the written pages, adding their subtle interpretations, recreating the composer’s narrative; 3) Then the listeners do the third and final part, listening, each internalizing and embracing the composer’s statement in their own way.
If I could do that even once, my life would be a success.
But I was also enticed by the evolution of this art form. The composers who preceded Mozart, who one by one laid down new ideas, structures, diverse instrumental sounds, harmonic and rhythmic nuances, allowing Mozart to write the way HE did. And the composers who followed him, who continued to evolve music. This is art, but it’s also science. It’s scholarly work if there ever was: Digesting the the current body of knowledge in a particular field - Chemistry, Mathematics, History, Painting, AstroPhysics, etc. Then using the past advances to influence future advances. And so on.
This is what I was thinking about when I was a young composer. I felt it was my job to push music’s boundaries. I thought that was every composer’s duty, originality and invention. That composing within the norm was merely “rewriting.” Yet, in order to accomplish all that I have just espoused, one must certainly have a one foot planted in the past, balancing as the other foot lunges forward. It is a complicated conundrum, and, like any attempted description of art, nonsense.
I wrote my first quartet while living in England and France on a Ph.D. post doc from the University of California – Berkeley. I spent most of my time composing, but also a lot of time contemplating how I was going to alter the path of MUSIC. In England we (my wife and two small children) lived on the Coast of the North Sea in a little town, Brancaster Staithe. I composed at the home of Lady Margaret Douglas-Home. She was royalty and the widow of a former Prime Minister of England! More importantly, she had a piano, which I needed in order to compose. Then, in Paris’s 14th Arrondissement, I composed in the baby’s room. But I spent a lot of time walking the streets of Paris and as I did along the coast of the North Sea. I was looking for something. Nonsense.
String Quartet (No. 1) is the result. I think it’s impossible to perform, although the Paducah Symphony String Quartet gave it a try. Sorry fellas. I think this means that it’s also impossible to listen to. But Milton Babbitt suggested “Who Cares If You Listen?” It’s still a controversial notion. As still that self-taught jazz piano player, my ears are my composing tools. I listen. And I write for the listener, absolutely. But I am baffled by my 1st quartet.
I am currently in the 3rd life of my composing mission. I’ve written two string quartets in the past year and am planning my 5th. However, I am determined to make my 1st quartet a reality. I am going to get back into my 1982 head so I can understand. Then I will rewrite No. 1 to become my 3rd quartet. Stay tuned.