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