John Liberatore, Composer | Work: a tree-sprout, a nameless weed

a tree-sprout, a nameless weed

Instrumentation: string quartet

Year Composed: 2016

Duration: 10 minutes

Program Notes:

a tree-sprout, a nameless weed is a string quartet in four small parts. The first movement is an adaptation of a duet I wrote in 2011 for violin and viola based on a heavily disguised motive of J. S. Bach. Following this comes a manically capricious hocket that dissipates into a motionless but tender third movement. The piece then lurches into an explosive finale—a brief and desperate outburst of tangled lines and incomplete thoughts.

The title comes from Margaret Atwood’s seven-poem cycle, "Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer." The poems chronicle an unnamed protagonist’s efforts to assert order into disorder, and to draw meaning and affirmation out of an indifferent landscape. In the second poem, Atwood describes his futile attempt to coax seedlings out of the tilled soil:

“He asserted
into the furrows, I
am not random.

The ground
replied with aphorisms:

a tree-sprout, a nameless
weed, words
he couldn't understand.”

The piece was written for the Mivos Quartet and dedicated to the ensemble, first performed at the VIPA Festival in Valencia. Mivos recorded the piece in 2017 for Albany Records.

a tree-sprout... movement II

Mivos Quartet

Appears on Albums:

Line Drawings: Chamber Music of John Liberatore

Released: August 1, 2018

Available on Albany Records.

Portrait album with:

Ryan MacEvoy McCullough
The Mivos Quartet
Duo Damiana
The Bent Frequency Duo
Jamie Jordan, Daniel Druckman,
and the composer on the glass harmonica

Features works:

Six Line Drawings a tree-sprout, a nameless weed The Soughing Wind A Line Broken, Traced Had They Remained

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JOHN LIBERATORE composer

a tree-sprout, a nameless weed

Appears on Albums:

JOHN LIBERATORE
composer