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Connection

2007

12 min

2 violins, viola, cello

Commissioned by Time of Music Festival

Dedicated to Quatuor Diotima

Excerpt, September 3, 2012

Uusinta String Quartet:

Maria Puusaari, violin

Teija Kivinen, violin

Max Savikangas, viola

Markus Hohti, cello

Klang Concert

Camerata Hall, Helsinki Music Centre

Instrumentation

2 violins, viola, cello

Performances

Premiere: July 6, 2007

Quatuor Diotima

(Naaman Sluchin, Yun-Peng Zhao, violin,

Franck Chevalier, viola, Pierre Morlet, cello)

Time of Music festival

Viitasaari

February 11, 2008

Allsar Quartet

(Ben Russell, Christina McGann, violin,

Miranda Sielaff, viola, Chris Gross, cello)

Serial Underground, Cornelia Street Cafe

New York, NY

February 15, 2008

Allsar Quartet

Columbia Composers

The Jonathan Kramer Memorial Concert

Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, NY

September 10, 2010

Kairos Quartett

(Wolfgang Bender, Stefan Häuslerr, violin, Simone Heilgendorff, viola, Claudius von Wrochem, cello)

Nordic Music Days festival

Den Grå Hal, Copenhagen

September 25, 2010

Kairos Quartett

Nordlichter-Biennale Berlin 2010

Radialsystem, Berlin

February 12, 2011

Arditti Quartet

(Irvine Arditti, Ashot Sarkissjan, violin,

Ralf Ehlers, viola, Lucas Fels, cello)

Musica nova Helsinki festival

Sibelius Academy Concert Hall, Helsinki

May 14, 2012

Jukka Rantamäki, violin

Kati Rantamäki, violin

Ulla Soinne, viola

Tuija Rantamäki, cello

Tapiola Sinfonietta concert

Camerata Hall, Helsinki Music Centre

September 3, 2012

Uusinta String Quartet:

Maria Puusaari, violin

Teija Kivinen, violin

Max Savikangas, viola

Markus Hohti, cello

Klang Concert

Camerata Hall, Helsinki Music Centre

August 24, 2013

Klangforum Wien

Gunde Jäch-Micko, violin

Sophie Schafleitner, violin

Ulrich Mertin, viola

Olivier Marron, cello

Art Festival of Pannonhalma

Arcus Temporum

Pannonhalma

April 10, 2014, 9 p.m.

Kairos Quartett:

Stefan Häussler, violin

Wolfgang Bender, violin

Simone Heilgendorff, viola

Claudius von Wrochem, cello

Tampereen Ylioppilasteatteri

Tampere Biennale

April 16, 2014

Uusinta String Quartet:

Maria Puusaari, violin

Teija Kivinen, violin

Max Savikangas, viola

Markus Hohti, cello

MATA Festival

New York, NY

February 19, 2015

Charlotte Munn-Wood, violin

Tema Watstein, violin

Anne Lanzilotti, viola

Rubin Kodheli, cello

Kalle Toivio, conductor

Composition Recital

Scandinavia House

New York, NY

October 21, 2015

Kairos Quartett:

Stefan Häussler, violin

Wolfgang Bender, violin

Simone Heilgendorff, viola

Claudius von Wrochem, cello

ConTempOhr

Solitär im Mozarteum

Salzburg

November 3, 2015

Kairos Quartett:

Stefan Häussler, violin

Wolfgang Bender, violin

Simone Heilgendorff, viola

Claudius von Wrochem, cello

Unerhörte Musik

Berliner Kabarett Anstalt (BKA)

Berlin

May 30, 2016, 8 p.m.

Kairos Quartett:

Stefan Häussler, violin

Wolfgang Bender, violin

Simone Heilgendorff, viola

Claudius von Wrochem, cello

Slovenska filharmonija, Dvorana Marjana Kozine

Ljubljana

January 14, 2017, 8 p.m.

Kairos Quartett:

Stefan Häussler, violin

Wolfgang Bender, violin

Simone Heilgendorff, viola

Claudius von Wrochem, cello

L’apparitions des traces, IGNM Basel

Gare du Nord Basel

October 1, 2017, 3 p.m.

TampereRaw:

Anna Angervo, violin

Maria Itkonen, violin

Heili Hannikainen, viola

Elina Sipilä, cello

Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu festival

Tulindberg sali, Oulun Musiikkikeskus

Oulu

November 20, 2017, 7 p.m.

TampereRaw:

Anna Angervo, violin

Maria Itkonen, violin

Heili Hannikainen, viola

Elina Sipilä, cello

Arctic Colors – TampereRaw

Pyynikkisali (F.E. Sillanpään katu 9)

Tampere

Program notes

Connection was commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the Time of Music festival. This 12-minute work, being my first composition for string quartet, took approximately seven months to finish. The name Connection can be seen as referring to, for example, the communication between the members of the string quartet. It was very inspiring to write for Quatuor Diotima, to whom the composition is also dedicated. Many thanks to the event’s wonderful musicians; Diotima’s musical and technical skill is indeed dazzling! Many thanks also to LUSES, The Foundation for the Promotion of the Finnish Music.

In case the listener wants to get an idea of the theoretical starting points behind Connection, here are a few words on the gestures, registers, rhythms, and harmonies of the piece. The work takes its first steps with the developing wave gestures streaming through the whole register. This music of extreme registers of the opening, contracts into a single note, approximately in the mid-point of the work. Parsing the piece from a rhythmic point of view, one could roughly divide the work into two halves, the first consisting of polyrhythmic music, and the latter half of additive rhythms. The full quarter-tone harmonies are built from the point of view pitch sets, with the exception of the spectral harmonies in the conclusion of the piece.

Connection opens with high and soft initial pitches. They get faster, more emphatic, and then collapse as an avalanche of sound to the lower register, from where the music bounces back to the heights. The same process is repeated with more noisy timbres. The gestures separated by pauses shorten, and eventually only two short notes are left. Thus, the first period of half a minute, flashes over quickly. The gestural figures are brought out with different characters, until the register contracts from the exposition of extreme registers into the repetition of a single note, approximately in the middle of the work. From this note the register opens again.

In my recent compositions, I’ve based my construction of rhythms, among other methods, on the concept of rhythm interval. A rhythm interval means the relationship between two independent, even rhythms. In the work Connection, I have used, among other things, certain rhythm intervals and cell- and durational rhythms based on them. By a ‘cell rhythm’ I mean the slowest possible even rhythm that covers both rhythms within the interval.  ‘Durational rhythm’ simply means the duration of the rhythm interval, in other words, the speed of the meeting points of the even rhythms of the rhythm interval. The most simple polyrhythm, the rhythm interval [2:3] with its cell and durational rhythms could be expressed, for example, in quarter notes, eighth notes, eighth note triplets, and sixteenth note sextuplets. With this method, changes in a rhythm intervals result in four-part writing of rhythm, where the individual lines have a specific relationship to themselves and to each other. With this kind of rhythmic texture, one can create rhythmic resolutions and processes.

The first work that I composed with full quarter-tone harmonies was Haljennut, written in 2004, and it was first performed the same year at the Time of Music festival. From then on, I’ve used quarter-tone harmonies in all my works both from a spectral and a pitch set point of view. In the work Connection, pitch sets are the predominant point of view. The building of pitch sets begins from the intervals; an interval is added to an interval, followed by another, until one arrives at a four-note pitch set. One of the pitch sets used in Connection is {0 1.5 3 4.5}. In this pitch set, every interval from one note to the nearest one is 1.5, i.e. the interval between a minor second and a major second.

Quarter-tone congratulations to the quarter-century old Time of Music festival!

Sampo Haapamäki

Videos & audio

November 3, 2015
Kairos Quartett:
Stefan Häussler, violin
Wolfgang Bender, violin
Simone Heilgendorff, viola
Claudius von Wrochem, cello
Unerhörte Musik
Berliner Kabarett Anstalt (BKA)
Berlin