DAVID MacBRIDE – Three Dances for String Quartet

American Contemporary composer David MacBride [born 1951] has written several named works for string quartet. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of information about him – he doesn’t even make it on to Wikipedia.

The work opens in a most attractive manner, with solid melodies, slightly lamenting, to the fore. The sound is somewhat intangible and involves a touch of light dissonance and intensity before dropping back to a more lyrical mood. The cello makes its first appearance and its resonance adds a great deal to the texture. A pause leads to a much more agitated sound, although I wouldn’t call it confronting, even though it is quite forceful. A slight diminution in intensity leaves the music between two worlds – on the one hand abstractly beautiful, together with some intense musical statements. The tension builds again, but allows for some lyrical playing before the intensity returns with rhythmic utterances that drive the music forward. Further relief briefly ensues, but a return to the anxiety leads to a passage of alternating moods, constantly moving from the lyrical to the confronting. The end is made up of some gentle melodies, finally concluding with a flourish.

The Second Dance maintains the abstraction of the first, but contains a lot more lyricism, especially at the beginning. A solo violin passage brings the ensemble back to earth with the sparsest music heard so far. This is a fascinating passage of long melodic lines with very open harmonies, leading to the tonality being unclear. A violin commences a repeated phrase and the ensemble gather around it, giving it rhythmic impetus. There are many brief pauses in this movement and the sound generally is most attractive, alluring even. Now a pizzicato backdrop has equal status with the melodic violins, leading to an unusual texture. A brief period of chaos is again followed by a period of great beauty, with the violins very tender. A return to the pizzicato, with energy, causes the violins to increase in intensity, albeit slowly – the pizzicato is the dominant voice in this section. Another pause brings forth a wonderful, almost spiritual expression from the violins. A recurring violin motif causes the ensemble to change from pizzicato to sustained introspective melodic lines. The end is quite unexpected.

The Third Dance begins with an intensive, dissonant rhythmic manner. The violins bring forth dissonant harmonised lines. Another pause completely changes the mood into a busy folk-like passage. Violin melodies interlock, forming a powerful sound. The cello becomes prominent, thickening the ensemble texture. Again the tension recedes and the violins construct a busy dialogue, which is aggressive. Dissonance abounds in some sections – at other times the music is much more measured. A new, violin dominated passage builds to a crescendo, with the ensemble strong. This is music searching for an ending, but instead the intensity completely drops. Another pause brings forth a wonderful harmonised section that is more peaceful than anything that has been heard before in the movement. We are left with the sound of gentle harmonised violin melodies, which lead to a faded conclusion.

This is a wonderfully diverse work featuring attractive melodies contrasted with strong rhythmic sections – it is a powerful, slightly schizophrenic piece. I include the following alternative view from the CD liner notes:

MacBride would, therefore, be accepted by the academicians as a “serious” composer, in a way that most of the minimalists, conceptualists, new-tonalists, and various other late twentieth-century “-ists” might not.

Hmmm… make of that what you will.

The review CD, is titled David MacBride: Three Dances; Chartres – with Chartres being a three movement work for solo piano performed by Kathleen Supové. This contains a higher level of abstraction than the quartet movements, but is considerably more introspective – it is a fascinating piece.

The CD, performed by the Aurora String Quartet and on the NWCRI label is available on both Amazon US and UK.

This disc is on Spotify, and another, gentler string quartet work, A Muse for String Quartet can be heard on YouTube.

Listenability: Marvellous music, with some slightly confronting passages

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