DAVID LANG
ALMOST ALL THE TIME
FOR STRING QUARTET
FULL SCORE
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© 2015 by Universal Music Corp. (ASCAP) International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. RNY 1006 ISMN 979-0-041-61006-1
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almost all the time was commissioned by the Northern Music Trust for the Sage Gateshead, in honor of its tenth anniversary, and by Chamber Music Northwest.
the duration is approximately 20 minutes.
almost all the time was premiered 18 November 2014 by the string quartet of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, at the Sage Gateshead (UK ).
program note
Along with Chamber Music Northwest, the Sage Gateshead generously commissioned a piece from me in honor of its tenth anniversary, and it seemed only natural that my piece should also have to do with the number ten. And somehow it was really hard to figure out how to make that work. I am sure that part of the problem was that it can be paralyzing to think that there is something specific in a piece that I am supposed to do. I don't follow orders very well! But I think another thing is that honoring an anniversary is a kind of paradox - are we supposed to look back on and celebrate the discrete number of years that have just passed, or are we supposed to think about the vague and uncountable years ahead of us, and all the future work those future years might bring? Somehow this tension between the known and the unknowable, the concrete and the mysterious, the counted and the uncountable made it possib le for me to imagine my string quartet, in which long, orderly phrases (yes, ten notes long each) become gradually pulled out into longer strands that aren't or can't be counted. And because the time is measured in these ten-note phrases, but not dependably throughout the entire work, I decided to call it 'almost all the time.'
CopyrightbyRicordiNewYork
dedicated to Frances and Irvin Spielberg on the occasion of Irvin Spielberg's
q = 120; light, delicate and breathy, like air unstable, off balance and a little menacing, like air
poco sul pont., ad lib swells should be wild, with wide and unpredictable dynamic range cross strings between notes, when possible