Quartet for Strings No.14

Considering the first 30 seconds of my brief keyboard "Hommage ŕ Béla Bartók, Op.3" (2005) were written at the age of 24, in 1976, it should come as no surprise the winter of my life would see me returning to a similar theme - and in spades. This present work is a naked tribute to Bartók's 5th String Quartet (1936), a perfectly balanced composition in 5 movments, which requires precisely 30 minutes to perform by the metronome. The first and fifth movements are wild and tempestuous; the second and fourth are an etheral Adagio molto and an equally affective Andante; and the central Scherzo, marked Alla bulgarese in irregular 4+2+3/8 and 3+2+2+3/8 rhythms, breaks into pure chaos right around the 15-minute mark in a passage I - as a teenager - could only hear as a pack of furiously barking dogs: despite being notorious for never forming extramusical mental images from notes I hear.

So the quartet here published appears in 5 movements and requires precisely 30 minutes to perform by the metronome. The opening and closing allegros frame a lento and a largo; and the central 2+5+2+3/8 scherzando descends into a brief sort of madness at precisely the 15-minute mark. Going one step further than Bartók, the entire work is a palindrome, with the second half precisely mirroring the first - but for a few occasional changes in phrasing and register ... and radically altered dynamics.

The dedication reads in Hungarian: "With undying gratitude for the legacy and example of Béla Viktor János Bartók." His spirit has journeyed with me for almost the entirety of my life. He was in my estimation the first - and possibly the only - composer to grasp exactly what Beethoven was driving at in his Late Quartets. While not worthy to reach up for either of their shoelaces, I have done what I can to cherish and adapt their traditions.