Two example program notes from my recent work:
String Quartet no. 2 (‘Meldebescheinigungen’) (c. 12’)
I wrote this piece for the Bozzini Quartet (Montréal) who were to premiere it at the SoundSCAPE festival in Cesena, Italy in July 2020 (cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The quartet originates in ten short musical fragments corresponding to places I have lived, alluded to in a prose poem by my partner, the writer Joseph Pearson (‘Meldebescheinigungen’ are registration records, of the sort one has to keep in Germany and elsewhere.) The material of the fragments derives from references, even in-jokes; these connections guided my initial compositional choices. The final registered address—in Brussels—provides the initial structure for the quartet as a whole, which mirrors the structure of second Kyrie of the Ockeghem Missa prolationum (quoted briefly). The fragments transform and recombine as the piece progresses such that the original ten-fold idea, expressed at the opening, unfolds like a three-panelled screen.
‘Seven Canons for the Plague-Spring’ (2020). (c. 9’15”)
In a week or so of stir-crazy compulsion during the (first) lockdown in April 2020, I composed a set of canons exploring various kinds of contrapuntal topsy-turviness (crab canons, inversions, mensuration canon, and so forth). Various instruments could play them (at pitch or transposed). I wrote them with the clarinettist Mingzhe Wang in mind (to whom they are dedicated).
–James Helgeson