René Mogensen composition - Air and Marble: moments in a ruined city for string quartet
commissioned by choreographer Renata Celichowska
The first performance of the entire four movements of the string quartet (revised in 2005) was in a concert by the Esbjerg Ensemble, at the royal conservatory in Esbjerg, Denmark on May 14, 2005.
1. The wind blows around large marble blocks
2. Spiraling air currents
3. The marble dances
4. Dusk falls around the stone
Renata Celichowska asked me to write two short string quartet movements which she could use for new choreography, for performance in conjunction with choreography to John Zorn's "Kol Nidre" string quartet. This immediately looked to me as an opportunity to write some music that dealt with the melodic minimalism of Zorn's work. And as I thought more about the new piece, I found myself exploring form and textural possiblities I had sensed in the works of other current composers such as Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass, but probably with a bit of buildt-in influence from the gestural aspects of the master of miniature composition Anton Webern, and the melodic insistence of jazz artists such as Wayne Shorter.
Renata was also using in her work the image of "the ruins of a roman city destroyed by battle, where the wind blows around the survivors." As I had recently spendt a good deal of time in the south of Italy, and visited various excavations there, this imagery was an excellent fertilizer for my muse. I ended up writing four short movements and named them according to personal impressions of the Paestum Ruins, south of Salerno.
René Mogensen, November 2003
