Program Notes

This commission has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The string quartet’s agility, blend, range, timbral palette, and non-tempered tuning possibilities, make it one of the standard chamber formations that I revisit periodically. Sonare is my third and largest work for the medium to date. The title translates to “to sound,” or “to ring” from archaic Italian, but also refers to the origins of the term Sonata. Consequently, it simultaneously refers to my fascination with the physical sensation of sound, as well as the large-scale architectural possibilities for engaging and transforming recognizable musical objects non-linearly across time, through imagined labyrinths, compositional wormholes, déjà vus, and premonitions, all which are made possible writing/notation. Ultimately, I am interested in designing musical paths across opposite fields between elemental and static sonic landscapes, to ever-changing musical mosaics. Furthermore, the piece explores various musical obsessions of mine, such as instrumental virtuosity, continuums between pitch/noise, timbre/harmony, stability/movement, as well as the coexistence of self-similar micro and macro temporal articulations.

— Felipe Lara