CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
LEGACY QUARTET
A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of Master of Music in composition
By
Longfei Li
May 2014
Copyright by Longfei Li 2014
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The graduate project of Longfei Li is approved:
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Dr. Milen Kirov
Date
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Dr. Alexandra Monchick
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Dr. Liviu Marinescu, Chair
Date
California State University, Northridge
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to want to take this opportunity to thank a number of people who
help with my project. Firstly, I want to thank all my committee members, especially
my chair Dr. Liviu Marinescu, who always gave me inspiration when I composed
Legacy Quartet. I felt motived every time that I talked with him. Without his guidance
and encouragement, Legacy Quartet would not have materialized. Furthermore, I
would like to thank Dr. Alexandra Monchick to help me to polish my writing part.
Also, I want to express my sincere gratitude toward players including Agnes
Schwartz, Paula Kuhr, Si Tran, and Pierre Derycz who performed Legacy Quartet in
my recital. They are all professional and respectable. Thanks for their excellent work.
Lastly, I would like to thank my wonderful and supportive girlfriend Sisi Chen.
During this year, she offered me never ending understanding and love. Thank you for
always supporting me. I could not make it this far without you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Signature Page
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Acknowledgements
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Abstract
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Introduction of Legacy Quartet
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Full Score of Legacy Quartet
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ABSTRACT
The duty of contemporary composers is not only to create music with relevant
cultural and social values, but also to continue the heritage that master composers left,
and even expand it. After I wrote some radical pieces that incorporated original
musical ideas during my undergraduate program, I realized that my music lacked
humanity. Therefore, I decided to step back a little bit, to learn some more traditional
compositional techniques from master composers. As a result, I wrote Legacy
Quartet.
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Introduction of Legacy Quartet
Some of the ideas in this Legacy Quartet are taken from Bartok, Ligeti, and even
Messiaen, especially in terms of colors and textural sounds. I am always interested in
the relationships of polyphony, or traditional compositional techniques and textural
music: humanity and new orders from a large number of radical pieces in
contemporary music from a relatively conservative worldview. These two different
musical styles not only arose in the same time, but also transferred from one to
another. To achieve this goal, I needed to build an entire system of musical language
and then break it all.
Bartok is one of the signature composers of nationalistic music. To me, his music is
a symbol of logic and control; it perfectly regards human nature’s aesthetic in my own
perspective. I use humanity to describe his music rather than the word “traditional”
because all the structures of his music are very and well connected. He not only
published musical folk melodies from all over the world, but also composed music in
a very logical way. Most of Bartok’s music has powerful, rhythmic motifs and strong
textures, especially his string quartets. I was moved by the strong musical ideas in
both rhythm and texture, and I tried to compose a piece with two different powerful
movements that are, highly connected.
Ligeti continued this legacy from Bartok as a composer who combined folk
melodies and contemporary music as well. However, after Ligeti’s middle period of
composition, with sensitive judgment, he brought people an entire new world of
sound in terms of color and texture. The ability to control colors is important for a
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composer, and Ligeti is the model in this area, especially in terms of textural music
composition. When I first listened to the Atmosphères, I thought it was a new standard
of contemporary music. The textural composition fits perfectly with the orchestral
group. I was searching for a much smaller group to describe this colorful idea of
layers of instruments changing slightly in term of articulation. Adding layers created a
huge sound picture.
There are so many techniques that I could learn from Olivier Messiaen. When I was
composing Legacy Quartet, Messiaen’smusic gave me a strong feeling of timing and
control. He developed the musical idea of good timing, and managed each section and
movement well. Some of his ideas and textures seem simple, like the unisons from the
fourth movement of Quartet the End of Time. However, a deep analysis reveals
amazing detail in terms of musical and compositional techniques such as pitched
selection, timing control of every musical sentence, and even the use of rests. In order
to learn from Messiaen, I also chose some simple unison ideas for the second section,
and developed them using good of control of timing. Messiaen stood in the middle of
humanity and all radical new order and connected them, which is an essential
milestone for an important composer. Taken from Messiaen’s techniques of control, I
could find the connections and build transitions in conservative polyphonic and
textural music
There are three reasons why I chose the instrumentation of a string quartet. First of
all, players of string instruments can easily do glissandi to achieve the effect of
slightly changing color. Secondly, double and even triple stops could provide more
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sound layers with a limited number of instruments. Finally, a string instrument is one
of the best choices for sustained sounds.
The beginning of this piece initiated three important and sustained ideas
piece—pizzicato, unison, and glissandi. Glissandos are used throughout the entire
piece from the second measure to the last. Unisons, however, are the most important
texture in the middle session, overlapping with pizzicatos in terms of strong rhythmic
representations. The first section after the introduction is a fugue combined with
colorful accompaniments, especially the second violin, which is presented in the
overtone system with some tremolos quoted from the beginning of Ligeti’s Second
String Quartet. The theme beginning with the cello is much like a Bartok theme,
because his music can always bring power through strong rhythmic textures. It has
two different modes—a long line melody (from measure 3 to measure 11) and two
alternative notes of augmented fourths with syncopation. The writing style of this
fugue does not strictly follow the traditional counterpoint rules, but strongly presents
two different peaks (measure 40 and 67) through a conservative musical development
technique.
After this section, I moved to a faster movement; the ideas are basically unisons
with different layers of intervals connected with rhythmic pizzicati from the
introduction and also part of the fugue. I tried to use some simple cells of unisons and
then gradually develop them with the control of timing as Messiaen did. I also
combined elements from the very beginning. I bring the element of augmented fourth
syncopation back in the middle sessions, and divide this idea into two parts: The First
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is two alternative and repeated notes that transfer into many variations during this fast
session, such as birds sounds from measure 75 to 77 in the first violin and tremolos
from measure 82 in the top three strings and measure 89 in the cello. It becomes more
complicated with one additional note besides two, staggered between each instrument,
and finally reaching a peak of the fast movement (measure 143). The second is the
syncopations that represent pizzicati combined with unisons and tremolos, such as
measures 86 and 127 in the bottom three instruments, and 139 in the top. The ending
of this fast movement is built with glissandi that start from the beginning, and some
melodic moments in the fugue.
Powerful rhythmic ideas and musical language gradually break during the transition
coming from at measure 110. The he former system has disappeared, including
unisons, glissandi, and pizzicati. With a powerful pause between each phase, the
former elements search for a way to break out of the old order and find a new one.
The old logical mode has also changed, and finally brings us to the new sound world.
The slow movement (measure 189) is based on long notes with slight color change
through glissandi. The idea of all the instruments slowly moving to the top registers
and then dropping to the deep is comes from Ligeti’s Atmosphères‎. I subtle changed
color through glissandi, pauses, and repeated notes in double stops very.
Unconsciously, these layers climb to the top sound area together with extremely sharp
and strong sounds and then suddenly drop to the abyss in the cello part, which has
already changed the tuning of the lowest string.
Finally, I bring the melodic theme from the fugue part, represented in the overtone
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system in the coda together with flashed pizzicati and aggressive glissandi to finish
the whole piece. It is like a false recapitulation of the first fugue part, but only with
one single melodic line, which sounds like some deep memories from far away. This
is the reality that all of history including music, is a one-way road, and we can never
truly go back, only memories remain and sometimes flash back.
I attempted to compose a unified piece with limited but logically organized musical
ideas. To achieve this goal, I conservatively composed and managed every musical
texture. This helped me to improve my understanding of music itself by adding more
elements of humanity into my music. Today, many composers are writing more and
more radical pieces, but it is also meaningful that I backed up a bit, summarizing the
transformation of contemporary music in not only musical styles and textures, but
also in the way that I aim to compose. With my piece, I thank master composers and
the heritage that they left to us.
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