Five Short Pieces for Cello Quartet

Abstract

My aim for this project was to engage directly with questions of musical composition and theatrical production by creating several compositions to accompany moments in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I created my own compositions, emphasizing post-tonal music theory techniques as way of exploring how the contemporary sounds might add a new dimension to Shakespearean classics. I limited myself to one instrument, the cello, to make use of the instrumental range of what is often seen as the musical instrument that is closest to the human voice. I used GarageBand music editing software to arrange the instrumentation as a cello quartet, in which I recorded myself playing each part separately, then layered the recordings together to create four-part sonorities. My five consecutive short pieces accompany the fairy song in Act 2 Scene 2 with an introduction, and four verse accompaniments. These explore the coordination and manipulation of pitch class, pitch intervals, and the mod-12 complement system. 20th century post-tonal musical influences include Milton Babbitt's "Philomel" (1964), Steve Reich's "Different Trains" (1988), and the fourth movement of Anton Webern's "5 Sätze Für Streichquartett" (1909).