String Music

A performance of "Duet for Violin and  Viola" from the recent Belvedere Chamber Music Festival in Memphis Tennessee.

Daniel Gilbert: Violin
Patrick Holmes: Viola

This duet is a sort of musical conversation between two instruments. At times they agree, at other times they do not. As with any conversation, the psycholgical progression can be as meandering as the topical one

Duet for Violin and Viola: Belvedere Music Festival

This string quartet explores the modulatory potential of the modern modes. This first movement moves from dorian to lydian and back.

String Quartet in Modes- Dorian

This string quartet explores the modulatory potential of the modern modes. The second movement modulates from Phrygian to Lydian and back.

String Quartet in Modes- Phrygian

Performance of "Circles of Misunderstanding" from the inaugural Birmingham, New Music Festival
Cello: Laura Usiskin
Piano: Adam Bowles

"Circles of Misunderstanding" is an attmept to express the conflict that arises from two points of view, both perfectly comprehensible in their own right, that are incompatible with each other. The piece’s two instruments chase each other around tonal areas, competing for temporal and motivic dominance. As one reaches an idea expressed by the other, that other moves on to a different idea. Finally they return to their original perspectives, diminished from their struggle with each other.

03 Circles Of Misunderstanding BNMF 2014

Among the most recognizable of psychological archetypes is the Self; the totality of all the characteristics, perspectives, and personal natures we can introspectively recognize as our own, and the Shadow; the collection of repressed traits, tendencies, and instincts with which we do not identify but nevertheless posses. 

While the Shadow is always present, hidden within the details of our awareness, it is rarely observable to the conscious mind. However in times of stress or personal growth the antithesis of our self image can come boiling to the surface. And although it may seem sinister to us, exposure often reveals it as a source of creativity, inspiration, and the keeper of all the honestly simple emotions and drives that we had forgotten.

This composition is a programmatic telling of the emergence and (inevitable?) return to the unconscious of the Shadow Archetype. It is also an exploration of the archetype concept itself: having both a conscious texture, and a subconscious harmonic direction. Its key structure consists of a tonal center, and two “subcenters” which are complete tonal areas in themselves, but are nevertheless part of the greater whole. As the conflict between Shadow and Self progresses, the intervallic distance separating these keys is altered to produce greater dissonance or consonance as necessary to reflect the greater or lesser concord between the divergent aspects of personality.

Violin: Julia Sakharova
Viola: Michael Fernadez
Piano: Adam Bowles

Shadow and Self

While invaluable to the development of Western civilization, the Greek philosopher Socrates
 is believed by some scholars not to exist.  According to this theory, he is not a living person, but a pedagogical device
used to teach philosophical ideas to newcomers.
Others point to extant evidence that Socrates was indeed real, and had his own inner circle of students.
 
  This piece is a reflection on the verisimilitude of Socrates’s existence. It is a struggle with the
question of whether so influential a figure can truly be imaginary and ultimately an arrival
at the decision that his realness is not as important as his influence.

Viola-Michael Fernandez
Piano-Adam Alan Bowles

The Socratic Problem

A recording of "Tabula Rasa" made by Craig Hultgren and Adam Bowles on their recent tour of the gulf coast

05 Tabula Rasa-BAMA Gulf Coast Tour

Emotional, gentle, and occasionally disturbed. Matthew's music endeavors to make the inexplicable understood, or at least accepted. Classically trained, and academically educated, Matthew uses music to attempt to link the conceptual, intellectual, and abstract with the emotional, inspirational, and spiritual. Check back here for dates of live performances, recordings, hints, the meaning of life, and other things happening in the world of MsP's music.

String Music

Matthew Scott Phillips