COMPOSER

String Quartet (15 minutes)

Songs Without Words is a string quartet in eight short movements.

I began this piece when I was pregnant with my first child and finished it nine months after she was born. It explores the unspoken connection we had while she was in utero… the nascent understandings that developed while we shared the same body.

The basis of the piece is a melodic figure based on a beautiful sound that my daughter made for some months after she was born – a hummed vocalisation that approximated a repeating minor third.

As she began exploring language she stopped making this sound, but I believe the instinct that generated it will always be a part of her personality. Surely there are traces of that first musical impulse that resonate when she sings to herself now, as an adult?

LISTEN

I. Dolce

II. Teso

III. Etereo

IV. Tranquillo

V. Languida

VI. Affetuoso

VII. Concitato

VIII. Lontano

WATCH

Score and parts are available for rental.

Songs Without Words was commissioned by the New Zealand String Quartet in 2006

Audio recording performed by Justine Cormack (violin), Miranda Adams (violin), Robert Ashworth (viola) and Ashley Brown (cello).

Video recording – from AWE Festival in Wanaka (2022) – performed by Justine Cormack (violin), Marike Krudup (violin), Robert Ashworth (viola) and Ken Ichinose (cello)