Matt Sargent Separation Songs Eclipse Quartet - CB0055 - Contemporain - par Cold Blue

Separation Songs is a haunting hour-long continuous work for two string quartets. In it, composer-performer-music technologist Matt Sargent systemically juxtaposes and weaves together an array of 18th-century composer William Billings’s hymn tunes, subtly altering certain aspects of them via real-time-generated variations as the piece unfolds. Sargent writes, “Throughout the piece, hymn tunes come and go, passing from one quartet to the other. As tunes reappear, they filter through a ‘separation process,’ whereby selected notes migrate from one quartet to the other. This process leaves breaks in the music that either remain silent or are filled in by stretching the durations of nearby notes, generating new rhythms and harmonies.” Both quartet parts are performed on this recording by the Eclipse Quartet, a celebrated long-time stalwart of Los Angeles’s new music scene. As one critic wrote: “Ever wonder what two centuries colliding sounds like…? Listen to Separations Songs.” [CD in 6-panel wallet]