AARON JAY KERNIS

Symphony in Waves
String Quartet No.1
(musica celestis)

AARON JAY KERNIS

PHCD165  |   Phoenix CD

Name Credit
Aaron Jay Kernis Aaron Jay Kernis Composer
Gerard Schwarz Gerard Schwarz Conductor
Lark Quartet Lark Quartet String Quartet

Overview

PHCD165

Aaron Jay Kernis

SYMPHONY IN WAVES

STRING QUARTET NO.1 (musica celestis)

 

New York Chamber Symphony  

Gerard Schwarz, conductor        

The Lark Quartet      

Prior to writing this work in 1989 I never imagined I would write a symphony. It seemed such an outdated and irrelevant form. But since that time I’ve become increasingly excited by the communicative potential, by the highly varied ideas and emotions, latent in traditional forms. I hope to find what ‘symphony’ means to me, to define the form for myself, by bringing my own experiences and passions to it.

I am not dealing with waves in a strictly programmatic sense. I think about waves of sound in addition to those of wind and water. Each movement uses some aspect of wave motion: swells and troughs of dynamics, densities, and instrumental color: the ‘sounds’ of light broken into flickering bits by water’s action.