String Music by Frank Felice

Two by Four is a work for three violins and viola, with a Pärt/Adams minimalist feel to it - very accessible to concert listeners

Two by Four

This work was composed for the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers "Forging Links" conference, and commissioned by the them, and composed for Brandon Page - it is a very accessible sweet duo, contrapuntal in nature, something that could be played as an offertory in a small church that had a pair of high string players

Reflections of a Hymn of Thanksgiving

"Quarks" exists in two versions, this one for viola, and also one for solo violin - composed for violinist Jeanne Benson, these six pieces are named after the fabled subatomic particles, and are by turn fun, playful, quirky, prickly, and acerbic.

Quarks for solo viola

Composed for Jeffery Holston, this piece was written to appeal to a young high school cello student, while using modal melodic resources, and a Americanesque folk rhythmic palette.  It is rhythmically vibrant and very very accessible.

Simple Suite for Violoncello

A VERY minimalist, very quiet string quartet, consisting of only two pitches, and a repetition of the whole after the audience applauds - a nice concert  palette cleaner for a thick and zesty concert.

String Quartet No. 2

A one-movement, buzzy, modernist-sounding string quartet with an interior wistful reflective episode set amidst the tumble - virtuosic, hectic, a tour de force -  composed for the Montclair String Quartet.

String Quartet No. 3

A fun four-minute quartet, based on quartal harmonies - some theatre is involved, and a wistful viola solo is featured in the third movement, composed especially for Eric Peterson, violist of the Loring String Quartet - commissioned by the Loring String Quartet.

String Quartet No. 4

Work for solo double bass based on the book of Habakkuk, from the Old Testament of the Bible, chapter 3:  

"Were you angry with the rivers, Lord?
Was your wrath against the streams?
Did you rage against the sea
when you rode your horses
and your chariots to victory?
You uncovered your bow,
you called for many arrows.
You split the earth with rivers;
the mountains saw you and writhed.
Torrents of water swept by;
the deep roared
and lifted its waves on high"

A piece of many moods and colors, a virtuosic piece commissioned by the International Society of Bassists for its 2001 convention soloist competition.

Were You Angry With the Rivers

Based on the moment in the Book of Job when God questions Job - a very dramatic, virtuosic piece, ducking, dodging, questioning, evading, and eventually submissive;  Composed for Davis Brooks - it is available on iTunes and Amazon.com from Ravello Records.

BRACE YOURSELF LIKE A MAN

"A Liturgy of the Hours" is essentially a singular, personal musical impression of the liturgical hours -  a period of time defined by the individual hours of prayer and worship over the course of a day.  Typically, during the course of a day’s liturgy, the prayers begin at midnight, with Matins -- dawn begins with Lauds, moving through the morning and afternoon with Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and moving into the evening with Vespers and finally, Compline.  Each prayer is about three hours apart from each other, and depending on which church’s tradition you follow, will have a set of readings, hymns, psalms, and prayers which are read, sung, or prayed.  This sonata is loosely based on some of those readings. psalms, and prayers, with a verse or fragment of those hours listed below.  The individual movements contain some shared musical material between movements, but is unlike a typical violin sonata in that the violin is not always the principal instrumentalist – indeed, most of the time, the foregrounded music is an amalgamation of both instruments.  The musical language, while accessible, is contemporary to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and takes advantage of scordatura violin writing, modes of limited transposition, and inside the piano work popularized by Olivier Messiaen, George Crumb, Henry Cowell, Charles Ives and others.  This piece is not a straight programmatical work – rather, the work reflects the impressions made upon me while working on it, and when reading/praying the liturgical hours, I made similar connections between the texts below (taken from a single day’s breviary texts) and the music as it was being written.

It is here performed by the violin-piano duo "Ascending," by whom the piece was commissioned

A Liturgy of the Hours (Violin Sonata No. 1)

I am an eclectic composer who writes with a postmodern mischievousness: my pieces can be comedic/ironic, simple/complex, or humble/reverent. My recent projects have taken a turn toward turn towards the sweeter side, exploring a consonant adiatonicism.

String Music by Frank Felice

FRANK FELICE, composer