nonsense
for string quartet2024
~4’47”
the structure of this piece arose from the integration of a framework of instrumental articulations (which is palindromic, reversing in the middle and ending as it began) with one round of a cycle of twelve hexachords (or pitch groups of six notes, which each blend into the next via common dyads). this superimposition inverts the directionality of its parts; the
palindrome is given cyclicity, and the cycle is presented linearly.
this form is redolent of the poem below, which comes from one of the notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and is there titled ‘Nonsense’ (though it is not the only entry to receive such a self-deprecating designation). Words blend into others, like the hexachords with their pairs of common pitches, forming aural palindromes (“Sara never rashly”) and near-anagrams (”melted Metals”, “more than mortal”).
O Sara! never rashly let me go
Beyond the precincts of this holy Place,
Where streams as pure as in Elysium flow
And flowrets view reflected Grace:
What tho in vain the melted Metals glow,
We die, and dying own a more than mortal Love.
S.T.C.
written during the Irish Composition Summer School in 2024 for the quartet of the
Ficino Ensemble (Larissa O’Grady, Danny McMann Williams, David Kenny, Ailbhe McDonagh)
Winner of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival Composition Competition 2025,
and premiered as part of the festival in Bantry on 4th July 2025 by Meliora Quartet
(Kate O’Shea, Cillian O’Cathasaigh, Kseniia Yershova, Oscar Casey)