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Modes (Of Resistance), for viola solo with two violins and cello.
Premiered April 2017, recorded August 2018 by the Del Sol Quartet
Charlton Lee: Viola
Ben Kreith: violin
Rick Shinozaki: violin
Kathryn Bates: cello
Modes (of resistance)—which I also sometimes call ‘modes and values’, after Messaien’s work of the same name—is a string quartet, but also a solo work for viola accompanied by strings. It is a work concerned with some unusual, marginal possibilities of rhythm, and with some relationships between noise and counterpoint, but also a classical : there is a Da Capo Adagio, and a “Minuet and Trio” at the end. Its ‘modes’ are both ‘types of melody’ and approaches to self-presentation; its values are both note-values and ‘interests or priorities’. It tries to resist not a specific kind of authority or regime but something more compelling and troublesome, something intangible but discrete, something in the law of language, something in me.
