pulviscular compression (2019)

pulviscular compression is an 11-minute piece for 19 string instruments spatially organised as four string quartets and three double basses.

This is a timecode-supported polytemporal string orchestra piece

pulviscular compression is dedicated to my friend, the composer Camden Reeves.

pulviscular compression is a terse, compressed, agitated and somewhat relentless composition that attempts to establish a comparative degree of calmness and resolution toward its conclusion. pulviscular compression‘s relationship to landscape, intuitively established through self-borrowed materials taken from observation 4, and observation 5 and before them, the original observation quartets, observation 1, and observation 2 is occasionally audible but frequently obscured by the dense polyphonic and polytemporal entanglement of all 19 independent instrumental voices.

Recordings were made with the Karski Quartet and the Viridis Quartet at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester (RNCM) on the 15th March 2019 with the support of Larry Goves, senior composition lecturer at the RNCM. pulviscular compression is composed primarily of the material of two previously extant string quartets, observation 4, and observation 5, that were brought together as pulviscular observation for the RNCM event ‘The Future of the String Quartet’ with @RNCMvoice and Ensemble+, the RNCM’s new networking units. pulviscular compression also constitutes a string module within a larger composition for chamber orchestra called […] which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud […] (2019) that has been built as part of my practice-based PhD research project at the University of Leeds that investigates ‘Control, Flexibility, Flux and Complexity: A timecode-Supported Approach to Polytemporal Orchestral Composition. If you’d like to find out more about my research at the University of Leeds, please click on this link: ahc.leeds.ac.uk/music/pgr/1675/marc-yeats