Lacan (2007)
for string quartet with electronics
commissioned by the Penderecki String Quartet

duration: 20 minutes 45 seconds
download score (as pdf - 672 KB)
performance materials are available on request
parts (in the form of individual parts or scores)

also needed:
computer with stereo audio interface
stereo playback system

full recording:


Lacan –QX

Program Notes:
in one continuous movement:
1. Question (“control, educate, psychoanalyze”)
2. Dance I (at a distance — closer — near — intimately — transition)
3. Voices I (assertion — interlude, in imitation)
4. Voices II (acclamation)
5. Dance II (delight — transition — anxiety)
6. Voices III/Dance III (denial — idiotic enjoyment — Kol Nidre)
7. Answer

Often, I wake up in the predawn hours, tune the radio to the news, and drift back to sleep. Later, when I wake up, I remember the sounds of vivid dreams inspired by a mix of half-heard news reports and things bouncing around in my unconscious.  This composition, "Lacan," is built around both the broadcast sounds of political posturing on Sept. 11, 2006 — the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks — and on recordings from my life of the same time. The string quartet often takes on the melodic shapes and rhythmic contours of these recorded words as motivic material. Alternately, it plays something entirely different: an off-beat ragtime that seems less motivated by external matters. Even when imitative, the combination of music and language is rarely simple congruence, and that relationship enacts a kind of ‘dream-work’, which explores the ways in which (after Lacan) music is structured like a dream. In homage to this icon of contemporary psychoanalytic thought, the composition is framed by a reference to Jacques Lacan.

Performance History
premiere:
February 9, 2007,
Worcester String Quartet
Clark University (Worcester, MA)

February 13, 2007
Penderecki String Quartet
Wilfred Laurier (Kitchner,Ontario)

February 16, 2007
Penderecki String Quartet
University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario)

April 2007
QX String Quartet
Clark University (Worcester, MA)

July 22, 2008
QX String Quartet
Thayer Chamber Music Festival, Lancaster, MA USA