Morton Subotnick, "A Fluttering of Wings"

Continued Notes from Nonesuch 78020-1:



Part III: ANGELS (A Fluttering of Wings) is for string quartet and an electronic ghost score and is in four parts played without pause:

A Fluttering of Wings
Dance: one angel dancing/two angels dancing/three angels dancing
Halo
Song of the Angel

The opening is fast music of continuous 16th notes. The fluttering is created by the ghost which gently weaves the amplified quartet sound through the proscenium space. The dance is also quick and continuous, but the ghost here acts as pulsating support to the rhythm and tempo of the dance. In the third section, the music pauses for the first time. Here individual plucked notes and chords are altered by frequency changes produced by the electronics which help to create a halo like sound. The music of this section continually develops, both the old material of the work and the new material which is particular to this section. This continual evolution as well as the lullaby from The Last Dream of the Beast, which has been heard throughout the quartet, slowly subsides only after the "song" begins. This ending song, "the song of the angel" (a final articulation and fulfillment of the implications of the chorale at the end of part I), hovers quietly while the landscape gradually evolves into its final ecstatic form.

A Fluttering of Wings was composed in Berlin in 1981 and was written for the Juilliard String Quartet with the aid of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Juilliard School of Music.

Notes on the electronics used in each of the works: For the first performance of Ascent Into Air the 4C computer music system developed at IRCAM was used. The programming was assisted by Stanley Haines. On this recording some of the original sounds from the 4C are utilized on tape while the electronic part is predominantly performed on the Buchla 300 system. The most recent version uses the Buchla 400 system throughout.

The electronic ghost score is a silent digital control system which activates an amplifier, frequency shifter, and location device. The ghost electronics were designed by Donald Buchla and constructed by John Payne to my specifications and were made possible by a Creative Arts Grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and a grant from the Judith Thomas Stark Foundation.

JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET

In the three decades since it was founded, the Juilliard Quartet has set a standard of excellence for an entire generation, won acknowledgement as without peer among the ranking string quartets of the world, and been acclaimed in more than forty countries as indeed "the first family of chamber music"

The Juilliard Quartet continues as Quartet-in-Residence of the Juilliard School (where its members have trained a number of the most successful up-and-coming chamber music groups) and since 1962 has also been Quartet-in-Residence at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (where it gives an annual series of concerts on the priceless Stradivarius instruments willed to the people of the United States by Mrs. Gertrude Clarke Whittall). The ensemble has to date played more than 4,000 sold-out concerts in every corner of the globe; its world tours have included all the music capitals and major music festivals. In addition to its coast-to-coast American tours which include visits to a multitude of college and university campuses, the Quartet returns to Europe annually for extensive tours and frequently visits the Orient. In 1961 it was the first American string quartet to visit the Soviet Union, to which it returned for another triumphant tour in 1965. While its vast repertoire covers the full gamut of string quartet literature, the Juilliard Quartet is especially noted for its complete cycles of the Beethoven and Bartók Quartets. It has also premiered more than forty works by contemporary American composers.

Mastered by Michele Stone, KM Records.