Daniel Asia

String Quartets Nos. 1, 2 and 3 – Daniel Asia
Release Date April 1, 2019
Record Label Summit

One of my composition teachers and mentors was Stephen Albert. When I told
him I was writing a string quartet-my first-he bellowed back at me “How can you
even think of writing a quartet after Bartok’s?!” I remember being taken aback,
thinking about it for a moment or two and then responding “Stephen, then how
can one possibly write symphonies after Beethoven or songs after Schubert or
piano music after Chopin and Liszt?! (I write this using exclamation points as
Stephen only spoke hyperbolically and thus my response had to be of the same
order of magnitude of intensity.) As I remember that stopped him in his tracks.
Because either the forms are filled up and there is no more to say in them, or
one concludes that they are still viable and pregnant with possibilities. Certainly
the string quar tet medium remained an important medium for expression
by composers at the end of the last century. Any list of them would include
Lutoslawski, Brown, Druckman, Ligeti, Wernick, Crumb, Rochberg, Corigliano,
Carter, Tower, Lerdahl, and Tsontakis, among others.
This CD is in some ways then a response to Stephen’s outburst, although maybe
mostly in jest. They are written over a time span of about thir ty years and thus
show a good amount of change and development in style during that time. If
most composers’ outputs can be divided into three regions- beginning, middle,
and ending- these three quartets fit nicely into each of those categories (unless
I live like Carter to 103, which would put me still in the muddle of the middle).

of today’s exceptional string quartets and are Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida
International University in Miami. Their sound has been called “complex” but
with an “old world flavor.” Strad Magazine described the Amernet as “…a group
of exceptional technical ability.” Earlier in their career, the Amernet won the gold
medal at the Tokyo International Music Competition before being named first
prize winners of the prestigious Banff International String Quar tet Competition.
Prior to their current position at Florida International University, the Amernet
held posts as Corbett String Quartet-in-Residence at Northern Kentucky
University and at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Additionally, the ensemble served as the Ernst Stiefel Quar tet-in-Residence at
the Caramoor Center for the Arts.
In their 20 years on the concert stage, the four members of the San Francisco-based

Cypress String Quartet played thousands of concerts together
throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Praised by
Gramophone for their “artistry of uncommon insight and cohesion,” and by the
NY Times for “tender, deeply expressive” interpretations, they recorded over
15 albums and are heard regularly on hundreds of radio stations throughout
the world. They have also been heard on the Netflix original series “House
of Cards,” and collaborated with leading artists ranging from Michael Franti of
Spearhead to modern dance companies.

The first is rather brash and direct: each of the movements is short and sweet
and together create a satisfying unified architecture, one that builds in tension to
a high point and then releases. The second, built from my piece Marimba Music
(for that instrument played with four mallets and going as low as the cello), is all
about variations, as I was eagerly developing my technique in this regard. The
third is the most extended and varied, with rather long movements juxtaposed
with very short, almost micro, movements.
String Quartet No. 1 (1975) was written while I was studying at the Yale
School of Music, although I wouldn’t consider it a student work. It won an intra-
school award but I can’t remember which it was. Then again, Ives said awards
are for sissies. I don’t know about that, but I am still happy that it was considered
a strong piece by my compositional mentors.
It was first performed by the Rymour Quartet, who were then the student
quartet- in-residence. The group performed the piece splendidly and made the
first recording. I later was colleagues with the group’s violist and found its first
violinist in the concertmaster’s chair when my piano concerto was performed
in Chattanooga.

The work is in five moments almost all played without pause. The voice is
energetic and exploratory in its quick alternations of the macabre and frightening,
the quiet and serene, the rhythmically intense and gently lyrical. Architecture is
clear, with graceful and satisfying changes of intensity. The full resources of the
instruments are used, as the strings are bowed, plucked, and scraped, the bodies
of the instruments are rapped and tapped, and the bow is used both normally
and with the wood striking or being slid across the strings.
String Quartet No. 2 (1985) is a set of variations based on a three-par t theme.
The variations are gathered together in four movements, each with its own
shape and mood, although cross references and relationships abound.
The first movement presents the theme and four variations. The general
character of these variations is improvisatory and probing. The final variation, a
presto, brings the first movement to a breathless finish.
The second movement, comprised of variations 5-7, is somewhat of a
continuation of the last variation of the previous movement. It moves quite
quickly in steady sixteenth notes and triplets (although with a bit of rubato). This
gives way to a collage cadenza; here the musical movement is again somewhat
hesitant and pondering. It is characterized by quick changes of mood, from

Award, a Guggeneheim Fellowship, MacDowell and Tanglewood Fellowships, a
DAAD Fellowship, Copland Fund grants, the NEA (four times) and Koussevitsky
Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, and numerous others. From 1991-1994
he was the Meet The Composer Composer-in-Residence of the Phoenix
Symphony, and from 1977-1995 Music Director of the New York-based
contemporary ensemble Musical Elements. Asia’s five symphonies have received
wide acclaim from live performance and their international recordings. Under a
Barlow Endowment for Music grant, he wrote a work for The Czech Nonet, the
longest continuously performing chamber ensemble on the planet. He recently
finished the opera, The Tin Angel, and Divine Madness: The Oratorio, after the
eponymous books by Paul Pines, his collaborator of for ty years. Daniel Asia is
also a conductor, educator, and writer. He is Professor of Composition, and head
of the Composition Department, at The University of Arizona Fred Fox School
of Music, Tucson, and is also the Director of the annual Music + Festival and
Coordinator of the American Culture and Ideas Initiative. The recorded works
of Daniel Asia may be heard on the labels of Summit, New World, and Albany.
For further information, visit www.danielasia.net.
Praised for their “intelligence” and “immensely satisfying” playing by the New
York Times, the Amernet String Quartet has garnered recognition as one

Movements Two, Four, and Six, can be heard in relation to each other, a
subsidiary stream in relationship to the ongoing larger structure. Two and
Four are almost palette cleansers and are song-like. While movements One
and Seven are deeply conversational, these are more transparent, and with a
clear sense of melody and accompaniment. Movement Six is the most extended
of the three, and usually presents the instruments in simultaneous pairings. It
is of a playful and singing nature, with a burbling rhythm that just about runs
throughout. At the same time, in its structure, and the similarity of its opening
and closing, it imitates the structure of the entire work.
This quartet accepts certain influences from popular music which are absorbed
into its more complex texture and language. The keen listener may hear the
very occasional shard of material that may remind of something heard from
a television show theme, or even the movie The Wizard of Oz. While these
associations don’t leap out, they are present, even if only on a subterranean
level. It is a way of raising the vernacular to the refined, the mundane to the
sacred, with the goal of creating a music of deep and true engagement.
Daniel Asia has been an eclectic and unique composer from the star t. He
recently received a Music Academy Award from the American Academy of Ar ts
Letters and has received grants from Meet the Composer, a UK Fulbright Arts

pensive, wispy, and atmospheric, to slightly mad! This section gives way to a
return of the sixteenth note motion of the opening variation, but always with a
degree of hesitancy.
The third movement is marked majestic and includes variation 8 and a dance-
like music that has the quality of a delicately distorted pavanne. These dance-
like sections always give way to the variation material. At the conclusion, a final
reference is made to the very first variation.
The final movement, formed entirely of variation 9, is based on variation 4,
which in turn is based on the thematic idea played in reverse. More importantly,
it is based on steady sixteenth-note motion in two groups of 3 and is played
as fast as possible. A middle section of a more quiet, keening music presents a
brief contrast before the quick-paced music returns. Seminal ideas of the theme
are heard, as all aspects of the work are drawn together as the work races to a
breathless conclusion.
The work, written in 1985 while I was living in Oberlin, was supported by a grant
from the Ohio State Ar ts Council.
When I first discussed the possibility of doing a String Quartet No. 3 (“The
Seer”) with the Cypress Quartet, we spoke of the implications of working with

their Call and Response series, and various possibilities of influences and works
to consider “ riffing off of ”. I concluded that it would be most interesting to
consider the ramifications of working in the context of Dvorak’s Op. 96, also
called the “American Quartet”. I was drawn to its musical landscape, but also by
the implications of Dvorak’s ties to the old world as well as his sojourns in the
new. It seems to me that an American composer lives very much in this place
and time, but is also strongly influenced by past associations and past music.
Being American, in many respects, means integrating multiple influences and
identities. Therefore, this quartet, like Dvorak’s and perhaps Ive’s, fuses various
influences.
Titles always come after the fact for me. While working on this piece, I visited
the Phillips Gallery in Washington D.C. I have always been drawn to the visual
arts, as they are another non-verbal means of expressing that which is deeper
than words can describe. There were qualities of Adolph Gottlieb’s painting
“The Seer” that seemed quite analogous to my quartet. The work is mosaic
like in its larger structure. Certain shapes or patterns run through the work
while others stand in isolation. Seemingly incongruous panels of shapes build
up a pleasing and articulate form which is complex and has multiple layers of
organization.

My quartet is structured somewhat similarly. Movements One and Seven are
constructed on similar materials yet have different processes of development.
The First engages its materials in a process of deconstruction and then
reconstitution, while the Seventh star ts almost hesitantly and in dissolution, and
gradually works its way towards unity and reconciliation. The music is highly
rhythmic, almost motoric, and explores quite angular shifts of register and
instrumentation.
Movements Three and Five are the other par ts of structural importance, but are
also quite independent of each other, or of movements One and Seven, for that
matter. Movement Three is whimsical and quixotic. Thus, it is full of rapid mood
swings, from its almost dance-like materials, to those which are of a breezy,
more superficial nature. Movement Five is an adagio, a slow and somber musical
utterance. It is clear and straight forward in almost all aspects, as its rhythms are
simple and plain, and its melodies sharply defined. The trajectory is defined by
register, as it star ts very low, rises to the heights, and at its conclusion, comes
to rest in the lowest register yet again. The climax of the movement is arrived
at somewhat suddenly, and sections of repose are also heard, providing textural
respites on the journey.