Valley of Dying Stars (2005)
for string quartet

total duration: 16 minutes 30 seconds
download score (as archive of 4 pdf - 620 KB)
performance materials are available on request
parts (n the form of individual parts or scores)

Full recording:

Valley of Dying Stars, QX
i. lost, violent souls, leaning together

Valley of Dying Stars, QX
ii. Five o'clock in the morning

Valley of Dying Stars, QX
iii. Behaving as the wind behaves

Valley of Dying Stars, QX
iv. Sightless

Program Notes
in four movements:
i. lost, violent souls, leaning together
ii. Five o'clock in the morning
iii. Behaving as the wind behaves
iv. Sightless

Valley of Dying Stars (2003) for string quartet is a literal but wordless setting of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”. In keeping with the poetry, the mood throughout is pensive, apprehensive and restless. The rhythms and phrasing of the original text guide the composition, and are present throughout in a mezzo-soprano “voice” that moves fluidly between the ‘cello’s upper register, the viola, and violin’s lowest notes. Against this lyric, singing melodic line, the remaining ensemble combines into a volatile, intricate and often densely contrapuntal accompaniment. The compressed musical language of modernism is used here to express the introspective character of Eliot’s poetic world. The composition is organized into four movements -— consolidating the five original sections of the poem. The piece opens with the principle thematic material that always percolates just below the surface of the music: “We are the hollow men.” The composition ends quietly and without conviction, evoking the famous lines, “this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”

Performance History
April 2003, Worcester SQ, Clark University (Worcester, MA USA)
(premiere)

March 2004, Lydian String Quartet (reading session)
Brandeis University, (Waltham, MA USA)

December 3, 2004, QX, College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA USA)

August 2005, Wilfred Laurier University (Kitchner, Ontario) Pendereki String Quartet at biannual reading session

September 17, 2006, QX, Clark University (Worcester, MA USA)

July 2006, QX Thayer Chamber Music Festival (Lancaster, MA USA)