Agonal Passages

Dedicated to the Adelio String Quartet

1. Doldrumic

2. Estuarial

3. Cromatica

4. Heart’s Demise

Agonal Passages traverses a broad musical arc, touching on areas of futility, mundanity, chaos, and joy. While not written with a play-by-play narrative in mind, the piece represents a continuous thread of lived experience, each movement connecting linearly through palettes of varied human emotions. Most of all, this quartet is a meditation on the passage of time; while the word Agonal has certain connotations relating to mortality, the piece is not a pessimistic one. Rather, it explores how the inevitabilities of life and death can inspire a huge range of emotions and meanings – whether it is the quiet, slow, building inevitability of the 3rd movement’s fugue, or the heartfelt, understated, slowly dying chorale at the conclusion of the work. I invite listeners and performers to meditate on their own conceptions of life’s inevitabilities while experiencing this piece, and to hear parts of their lives through the different prisms of each movement.

This quartet is a homage to the works of Arnold Schoenberg (especially Verklärte Nacht) and Dmitri Shostakovich, whose initials and monumental 10th Symphony are quoted throughout the score.