Salome for string quartet
Duration: ca. 9'45''
Virtual premiere by the Quarantine Quartet™ (2020)
In spite of the title, this piece is not programmatic, I originally began this piece as a miniature for solo violin heavily inspired by the opera Salome by Richard Strauss before deciding to expand the piece into a work for string quartet. The sound world crafted in the beginning utilizes the double harmonic major scale as inspired by the biblical story. The operatic melody played by the viola after the introduction acts as a sort of home base for the piece, deriving from it much of the melodic material in later sections. The unruly, twisted, and intricate first half of the piece is dominated by the intervals of the minor second and minor third, as to highlight the distinct qualities of the scale. The dense clusters slowly expand into a more consonant, almost minimalist aesthetic, focusing on the major seventh chord and quintal harmonies. Composing the latter-half of the piece, I channeled my choral compositional roots to write something unapologetically expressive and beautiful; an unhindered exclamation of joy.
