Why a string quartet?

Ok, if anything can be the seed, then what are the implications of it being a string quartet?

Maybe this is not about the string quartet at all… So what is it about? The Network? The configuration of a new space and its “natural resonant frequencies”? Is the piece about exploring the space through sound? Knowing or understanding through sound?

References break down:

Scelsi SQ4: the dissolution of the format.

“While double stops are employed frequently in the Second and Third Quartets, in the Fourth they proliferate to such an extent that the score provides individual strings with their own staves, a notational device that underlines the instruments’ conceptual dissolution. And what this dissolution accomplishes is, more often than not, a blurring of the perceptual boundary separating one instrument from another. Consider the following excerpt, taken from measures 137-38. In measure 137 the cello’s first string doubles the viola’s first string. While the cello’s second string double the G-1/4# octave on the second violin’s second and third strings. Strings on one instrument are brought into a closer relationship with those of another instrument than with those of its own. What is posited here is an imaginary reconfiguration of the quartet, not as a group of four discrete instruments but as a collection of sixteen individual strings; or, to be more precise, as a single sixteen-stringed instrument. This reconfiguration makes the most of the quartet’s potential for timbral homogeneity, since such doublings work to efface the individual instrument’s timbral differences. In addition, the multiplication of the parts upon which this is all predicated allows a more thorough saturation chromatic space. By effectively doubling the number of parts available, Scelsi is able to create a much denser texture here than in the Second or Third Quartet, and can thereby plug some of the gaps that separate one band from another. In this regard, the works exploits the specific resources that the medium offers Scelsi’s single-note style in a more thoroughgoing way than any of the other quartets, but in doing so eliminates virtually all traces of the textures traditionally associated with the string quartet. The idealized conversation between four rational persons depicted by the classical quartet finds its antithesis here.” [The string quartets of Giacinto Scelsi, by Eric Drott – Intimate Voices: the 20^th Century String Quartet,  Ed. Evan Jones, University of Rochester Press, 2009]

Feldman SQ2: The time scale.

Stockhausen SQ1 (Helikopter Quartet): what can we do after it?

Xenakis: the algorithmic approach.

Sciarrino string pieces: the lightness.

Lachenmann: the noise.

Work with different time scales: the live performance, the echoes on the Network, the ionosphere… A cycle during the live performance, and a larger cycle after the “seed is planted”.

The scale: take advantage of the scale of the Network. The nodes, the paths, etc. Use it as a defining factor. Link it to the time scale. Use the multiplicity of nodes as an aggregation factor towards sound transformation. Let the form, the scale, the length emerge from the Network.

Reach the SQ from the Network. Focus on the Network, let the Network inform how the SQ should sound, what should they play, how to write for them.