String Trio

ENS.2017.4a | 12′
Violin, Viola, Cello

Score

I. The Coming Fury

II. Terrible Swift Sword

III. Never Call Retreat


My String Trio is part of an ongoing series of compositions in which fundamentally abstract music does battle with extravagantly unrelated extramusical narratives. However, in this piece, unusually, the musical narrative relies on no processes, cycles, or predetermined structure.

Instead, my strategy was to try and compose the kind of music I usually write using the tactics I developed for previous pieces, while remaining flexible, going where the material took me, because no plan survives contact with the enemy.

This String Trio forms the first part of a trilogy of instrumental works relating in some way to the American Civil War entitled “Mystic Chords of Memory.”