Since its founding in 1974 by violinist Irvine Arditti, the world-renowned Arditti Quartet has inspired hundreds of composers to write groundbreaking works specifically for the ensemble, among them School of Music director and faculty composer Joël-Francois Durand, whose connection to the group goes back decades.
In this free concert following the Quartet’s Oct. 16 Meany Center appearance, the quartet premieres Durand’s String Quartet No. 4, a new work written for the group for this performance, as well as pieces by James Clarke and Brian Ferneyhough.
Co-presented by Meany Center for the Performing Arts and the University of Washington School of Music. Tickets are not required for this performance.
Late Night Program
JAMES CLARKE: String Quartet No. 1
BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH: String Quartet No. 3
JOËL-FRANÇOIS DURAND: String Quartet No. 4 (World Premiere)
Program Note
Durand: Quatuor à cordes no.4, Musica fict(iv)a II (2026)
Like my second (2020) and third (2024) string quartets, this fourth quartet makes extensive use of “first order beats,” an acoustic phenomenon which naturally occurs when two tones of very close frequency are played at the same time. When these two tones approach the unison, one can perceive pulsations (beats) of ever slower frequency. I seek to discover the expressive potential that is revealed by these pulsations. On a very basic level, slow pulsations feel peaceful, calm whereas faster ones create tension; these poles could roughly be compared to what is traditionally considered consonance vs. dissonance in earlier music.
One difficulty with the perception of these beats is that one must almost “not hear” the tones that are produced by the instruments, but concentrate on the resulting beats that emanate from their combination. This requires shifting our listening attention from one level to the other, as if listening to some sort of polyphony. The beats are a very delicate acoustic phenomenon—sometimes much fainter than the main tones. They are also fairly unstable because they rely on the performers maintaining an absolute steadiness in intonation, something that is almost impossible to achieve for a long period of time: on string instruments, in particular, the intonation can vary minutely with the pressure of the bow on the string, as well as with the slightest movement of the finger on the string that is being stopped. These minute changes are usually not heard because with larger intervals, the ear adapts to the context—“understands the pitch,” so to speak. But the production of beats requires extremely small intervallic differences and, in this world, tiny changes in frequency can alter the effect dramatically. Far from being an inconvenience, I value this evanescence, this uncertainty, both in the production and the perception, as an essential part of the musical language based on this acoustic phenomenon. This fourth string quartet, like the preceding two, invites us to bring our listening attention to a very focused kind of concentration, inside the movement of the sound.
Biographies
The Arditti Quartet enjoys a world-wide reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Many hundreds of string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by first violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974. Many of these works have left a permanent mark on 20th century repertoire and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history. World premieres of quartets by composers such as Abrahamsen, Ades, Andriessen, Aperghis, Birtwistle, Britten, Cage, Carter, Denisov, Dillon, Dufourt, Dusapin, Fedele, Ferneyhough, Francesconi, Gubaidulina, Guerrero, Harvey, Hosokawa, Kagel, Kurtag, Lachenmann, Ligeti, Maderna, Manoury, Nancarrow, Reynolds, Rihm, Scelsi, Sciarrino, Stockhausen and Xenakis and hundreds more show the wide range of music in the Arditti Quartet’s repertoire.
The ensemble believes that close collaboration with composers is vital to the process of interpreting modern music and therefore attempts to work with every composer it plays.
The players’ commitment to educational work is indicated by their masterclasses and workshops for young performers and composers all over the world.
The Arditti Quartet’s extensive discography now features over 200 CDs.
42 CD’s were released as part of the ensemble’s series on Naive Montaigne. This series set the trend, by presenting numerous contemporary composer features, recorded in their presence as well as the first digital recordings of the complete Second Viennese School’s chamber music for strings. The quartet has recorded for more than 20 other CD labels and together this CD collection is the most extensive available of quartet literature in the last 40 years. To name just a few, Berio, Cage, Carter, Lachenmann, Ligeti, Nono, Rihm, the complete chamber music of Xenakis and Stockhausen’s infamous Helicopter Quartet. Some of the most recent releases with the French company Aeon include profiles of Birtwistle, Gerhard, Ferneyhough Paredes and Dusapin, and with Winter and Winter Abrahamsen.
Over the past 30 years, the ensemble has received many prizes for its work. They have won the Deutsche Schallplatten Preis several times and the Gramophone Award for the best recording of contemporary music in 1999 (Elliott Carter) in 2002 (Harrison Birtwistle) and in 2018 (Pascal Dusapin). In 2004 they were awarded the ‘Coup de Coeur’ prize by the Academie Charles Cros in France for their exceptional contribution to the dissemination of contemporary music. The prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was awarded to them in 1999 for ‘lifetime achievement’ in music. They remain to this day, the only ensemble ever to receive it.
The complete archive of the Arditti quartet is housed in the Sacher Foundation in Basle, Switzerland.
Composing, writing, teaching, inventing new ways of hearing – all are linked in the work of Joël-François Durand. As a composer, his career was launched in Europe with important prizes: a Third Prize at in the 1983 Stockhausen Competition for the piano piece “…d’asiles déchirés…,” the Kranichsteiner Preis from the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in 1990. Commissions and performances from many of today’s most significant ensembles followed – Ensemble Intercontemporain, London Sinfonietta, Arditti Quartet, Jack Quartet, Quatuor Diotima, ASKO, Ensemble Recherche, musikFabrik, Talea Ensemble, Dal Niente Ensemble, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philarmonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Seattle Symphony Orchestra. Durand is Professor of Composition at the School of Music, University of Washington, as well as Acting Director. He has been awarded the Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professorship for 2019-22. Durand’s works are singular and powerful, combining rigorous and innovative structures with a prominent lyrical impulse. Durand’s music and personality received critical attention in the 2005 book Joël-François Durand in the Mirror Land (University of Washington Press and Perspectives of New Music) edited by his University of Washington School of Music colleague Jonathan Bernard, which features in addition to analyses by Bernard and several of the School’s students, an innovative self-interview authored by Durand himself. Recent projects for Durand include a work for large orchestra, Tropes de : Bussy, based on some of Debussy’s piano Préludes, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, which was premiered April 18-20, 2019 and a work for viola and ensemble, to be premiered by Melia Watras, viola and the Dal Niente ensemble in May 2020.
Commercial recordings of his music are available on the Auvidis-Naïve, Mode Records, Wergo, Albany Records and Soundset Recordings labels. In 2010, Durand embarked on a new path: he designed and started commercial production of a new tonearm for record players. The Talea, as it was called, took the audio world by storm and was followed by three further models, the Telos, the Kairos and most recently (2019), the Tosca also aimed at the most refined audio reproduction systems. For his work at his company Durand Tonearms LLC, he was made a University of Washington Entrepreneurial Fellow in 2010. As a guest composer and lecturer, Durand has contributed to the “Centre de la Voix” in Royaumont, France where he was co-director of the composition course in September 1993, the “Civica Scuola di Musica” in Milan, Italy (1995), the Royal Academy for Music in London, UK (1997), the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (1984, 1990, 1992, 1994), the “VIII. Internationaler Meisterkurs für Komposition des Brandenburgischen Colloquiums für Neue Musik”, Rheinsberg (1998), Washington State University, Pullman, WA (2004), and Stanford University (2006), among others. In the Fall 1994 he was Visiting Assistant Professor in Composition at the University of California at San Diego.
Durand is listed in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.