Written: 2018-19
Duration: ca. 25'
Commissioned by J.K. Billman
Premiere: Euclid Quartet, Mostly Modern Festival, Arthur Zankel Music Center, June 25, 2019
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com
For more info.: https://robertpaterson.com/string-quartet-no-2

PROGRAM NOTES
In some ways, String Quartet No. 2 is similar to my String Quartet No. 1: the five movements are stylistically diverse, I use a few snippets of pre-existing music, and the music, while idiomatic, is technically demanding. As with my first quartet, this work explores technical and aesthetic ideas I didn’t have a chance to explore in other works.

The first movement, Colored Fields, is inspired by abstract expressionist painters such as Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland, and Barnett Newman, but also pointillist painters such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. There are textures that emerge and submerge using articulations that gradually shift from soft to loud, or short to long, and there are a few transitions that utilize a technique I call pitch phasing or phase modulation, as opposed to tempo phasing. In these transitions, two or more instruments gradually modulate (raise or lower) notes, motives, or phrases by gradual, very refined, microtonal, non-chromatic increments, settling on new pitch areas that directly reflect the previous areas, just modulated up or town. The movement ends softly with a virtual desaturation of the rhythmic material. I remove notes, one by one, until there’s nothing left.

The second movement, Rigor Mortis, is inspired by a comic strip by David Lynch that newspapers ran for many years. In this strip, Lynch sketched a stressed-out, pitch-black dog, looking very mean and almost buzzing with anger; it looked like it was about to explode. Every strip began with an accompanying paragraph that read, “The dog who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis.” This made me envision musicians playing with such ferocity and tension that the music seems to eventually cancel itself out, anger imploding in on itself.

The third movement, Dolente, is sad, lush, and mournful. The only request I had when writing this quartet was to incorporate a Norwegian fiddle tune or theme by Edvard Grieg, so I chose themes from Grieg’s String Quartet No. 1. The form of this movement mimics the form of a song by Edvard Grieg’s entitled Spillemaend (Minstrels, or Fiddlers). The poem that Grieg set in 1876 as the first of Six Ibsen Songs (Op. 25) is based on the Norwegian folktale of the fossegrim, a male water spirit who could teach the art of violin-playing, but often at the price of personal happiness. In some versions of the story, the poor violinist drowns in the end. Like the song, and echoing the second movement, this movement beginning with the protagonist’s longing, his desire for the beloved. Next, he encounters the fossegrim, who promises that becoming a master of music will allow the protagonist to become master of his beloved. In the final stanza, the protagonist becomes a master fiddler, but he is now a cursed, wandering musician deprived of earthly love, so he drowns himself.

The humorous fourth movement, Scherzando, capitalizes on effects that at times, often make the string players sound inebriated. I make use of copious glissandi and tempos that fluctuate between 3/4 and 6/8, giving a sense of unease.

The final movement, Collage, is similar to the first movement in that it is inspired by the visual arts, and specifically, collage painting and works by surrealists. Many themes from the first four movements are brought together in this odd-metered movement.

String Quartet No. 2 commissioned by J. K. Billman and is written for and dedicated to the Euclid Quartet.

The Indianapolis Quartet: Robert Paterson - String Quartets 1-3

String Quartet No. 2 - II. Rigor Mortis

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2025

After nearly 24 years of making 3d animations, i started to put all of my energy into making soundtracks and instrumental pieces.

All music that i write is notated.

Follow me if you like my music. I hope you enjoy the music.

American composer Robert Paterson is a true New Yorker—born and bred in Buffalo, he lived in Rochester and Ithaca for over ten years, in New York City for over twenty years, and now lives in Saratoga Springs, near the Adirondacks. Paterson’s colorful music embraces a wide variety of themes, everything from goddesses and online dating to mathematics and the environment. His music is filled with emotion and fierce rhythmic energy, marked by elegance, wit, and meticulous craftsmanship. Named Composer of The Year by the Classical Recording Foundation at Carnegie Hall, Paterson is the winner of the Alfred I. DuPont Award, and his opera Three Way won the Grammy® under Best Classical Producer of the Year. His music is often a Best of the Year pick on National Public Radio. His orchestral tone poem, Dark Mountains, regularly airs on NPR’s Performance Today. Three Way premiered with Nashville Opera, then BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and across the United States. Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, The Oratorio Society of New York, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Pro Musica, Albany Symphony, Musica Sacra, Austin Symphony, Vermont Symphony, and ensembles worldwide perform his works. Paterson gives masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, New York University, the Aspen Music Festival, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and more. He is the Artistic Director and house composer for Mostly Modern Projects. Robert is a lifelong vegan and advocates for animals and the environment, celebrating the natural world with ground-breaking works such as his Triple Concerto, A New Eaarth, Listen, and I Go Among Trees.

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Covert Acoustics is a creative sound collective dedicated to shaping immersive, genre-fluid sonic worlds.

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Klangmeer is the German translation for "Sea of sound" and that's what I want to create. 

In my early 20s a vinyl addicted house and funk DJ, still possessing the two Technics turntables, which were my first major investment. Dropped out of music when they forced the much more expensive CD into the market. Now back to music as a bedroom DJ and producer, mixing and producing my own stuff, still in love with house and funk and doing my first steps in orchestral composition and also techno. I'm also working on orchestral house as a musical concepts, trying to combine the magic of rhythm with the magic of classic instruments like strings, piano and others.

I have played and recorded in international settings, a multitude of percussion instruments, guitar, bass, harmonica, some flutes, keyboard, and if you push me - a very fine jaw harp.

In fact, if I break it down.... I just love to offer-up music, in a living room, a bar, a concert hall or an intercontinental, interactive satellite coordinated concert. 
  
I became fascinated with percussive sounds from around the world… especially African and Latin American rhythms. I fanatically traveled the world collecting anything that you could bang, scrape or hit.
What I learned? Border customs people really don’t appreciate the true value of handmade African caxixi shakers or a Brazilian berimbau. They just want the serial number.
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I toured Canada, USA and Europe and recorded many “world music” albums (before it was called that), with my late, musical soul mate, Dario Domingues. We played in grand churches, the water reservoirs under Munich, on an island where 100,000 doves were released at the climax of our performance, the first-ever “simulcast”, live satellite, intercontinental concert and then, the humbling experience of being involved in Berlin, in front of 500,000 people, for a series of anti-apartheid concerts featuring ‘Sting’.  For our 'world music' efforts, we were awarded the Deutscher Schallplattenpreisan (1983) accolade by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie, an association of recording companies of Germany that recognizes outstanding achievement in the music industry.  
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Whether you play in front of a half-million people in a field, or 10 people in a bar, your role as a musician never changes.  
 
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String Quartet No. 2 - II. Rigor Mortis

Robert Paterson Composer