String Quartet No.1
‘Time's Arrow’
(1991)
[also for string orchestra]
duration: 13’
GRT • 014
audio sample
4th mov.
score
available from
Australian Music
Centre
program note
String Quartet
No.1 (Time's Arrow) was commissioned by the A.N.A. Friendly
Society and premiered in November of 1991. The
subtitle, Time's
Arrow, is taken
from a novel of the same name by Martin Amis and was added
after the work had been completed. The novel represents the
story of a life told backwards (from death to birth), a
similarity I found in the structure of my quartet.
The work is in 4 short movements and based
around two themes. The first movement opens with a theme
that represents experience or memory. The movement
concludes with a second theme (in natural harmonics) which
represents innocence. This second theme is coincidentally
quite similar to the nursery rhyme, Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star.
The inner movements further develop the
first theme and represent the external journey and then the
floating timelessness of emotional involvement. The final
movement returns to the idea of the journey but in a rapid,
compressed state - like a life flashing before one's eyes -
culminating in a reprise of the second theme.
review
"Whether or not
one can find links between Stuart Greenbaum's Quartet No. 1
and Martin Amis' novel Time's Arrow (which, we're told, influenced this work),
it can certainly be listened to as a satisfying exercise in
music abstraction. The writing is extraordinarily skilled
in it’s imaginative exploration of mood and timbre, not
least a first movement presented with unwavering intensity.
There's a graceful obeisance to Janacek in a second
movement brimming with arresting detail - and a rapidly
stated, buzzing-toned finale that swept all before it
despite attenuation of tone from an indifferent
acoustic."
Neville Cohn, The West Australian, March 2005