pulviscular observations (2019)

For double string quartet
This is a timecode-supported polytemporal string piece
Dedicated to my dear friend, Gráinne Mulvey


pulviscular observations is an intimate, compressed, elegiac and sometimes explosive 11-minute piece for double string quartet. pulviscular observations‘ 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 frequently audible despite the sometimes simultaneous energetic polyphonic and polytemporal entanglement of all 8 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


