String Quartet No. 2
“Ghost Tongues”

Description

Ghost Tongues (2018) – for string quartet. Commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society through the Susan Bradshaw Composers Fund. Completed May 2018 (Den Haag). First performance 11 July 2018 by the Ligeti Quartet, Cheltenham Music Festival at Chapel Arts. Dedicated to the Ligeti Quartet. Duration ca. 11′

Programme Note

A tongue in carpentry is the ridge of wood used to slot together pieces of board – floorboards, for example. A tongue is also a language, of course; and in both senses a tongue is something that joins or creates connections. Bethan Morgan-Williams refers to the fragmentary sections that make up her string quartet as tongues. Ghost Tongues is in effect a long chain of connections, comprising reimaginings of a single piece of material – a giocoso violin duet heard at the start, and made up of wide intervals (some widened even further with quartertones) and sliding glissandi. Over the next ten minutes this opening idea encounters dances, conversations, interruptions and a lament, before coming to rest as a single, oceanic chord, played for a full minute.

But what of the ghosts – do they speak, or even have tongues at all? And if they did, what would their voices sound like? A spectral echo of our own, one imagines; a reflection that fades and transforms a little more with repetition and the passing of time.

– Tim Rutherford-Johnson