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away. On string instruments, too, it is has a distinct color: with seven sharps, no open strings are available, and the tone is shrouded. The musical character of the Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major, however, is energetic, refusing to be subdued by the dampened tone.
Finally, the Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Minor glows with extravagant solemnity. The Prelude dresses a lonesome setting with intricate decorations. Then the tight, five-voice Fugue opens chasms of range between the cello and upper voices and reaches upward toward the divine.
The Borromeo String Quartet premiered Kitchen’s transcription of the Well-Tempered Clavier at Carnegie Hall in October 2017 and has recorded it for the Living Archive label.
AARON JAY KERNIS (b. 1960)
String Quartet No. 4
(musica universalis)
2018 Tippet Rise Commission for String Quartet and World Premiere
Aaron Jay Kernis was born in Bensalem Township, Penn- sylvania in 1960 and has become one of the most frequently performed composers of his generation. He won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and the 2002 Grawemeyer Award, and has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Toronto Symphony Orchestra, among many others. He serves on the faculty of Yale School of Music and founded the Minnesota Orchestra’s Composer Institute.
His String Quartet No. 4 (musica universalis) is a 2018 commission from Tippet Rise and this is its first perfor- mance. While still at work on the piece in February 2018, Kernis offered this description:
Ever since I wrote my first quartet in 1990,
I’d had a plan to base four quartets around con- cepts about music suggested by medieval mu-
sic theorists. The first turned out to be called musica celestis (celestial music) and includes a
slow movement of that title that I arranged later for string orchestra—it is my most played work. The second quartet is musica instrumentalis (instrumental music, actually mostly related to dance). I’d hoped to write a work around the idea of music of the spheres for the third, but other ideas came to the forefront, so now I’ll be trying to address that daunting concept in the new musica universalis for Tippet Rise. It feels so approprate
to be writing for the spaciousness of the land and sky of Montana, and my early winter return trip to Tippet did much to inspire with its vastness and a sky that seems infinite. As I prepare to write this work I will be going back to reading on cosmology, but I’ve decided to try an approach unique to this work: to ask the Borromeo Quartet members to record a sonic enviroment
to be played while the quartet performs live, making the work, in effect, for string orchestra and live quartet. I could not see how I could match up my musical ideas without a much broader sense of sonic depth alongside the acoustic quartet. That is the starting place; the journey of the piece will come in good time.
CÉSAR FRANCK (1822–1890) String Quartet in D Major
César Franck is the father of modern French music and the link between that tradition and 19th-century German composition. His music echoes Beethoven and anticipates Debussy and Ravel, even though they would later reject certain aspects of his style.
Born in Liège to parents of German ancestry, he toured
as child prodigy pianist at the urging of his ambitious and eccentric father. He studied at the Paris Conservatory after becoming a French national, a prerequisite for enrollment.
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