Mason: String Quartet No. 1 for String Quartet

String Quartet No. 1 is a powerful and harmonically dynamic string quartet in four movements. It mixes both tonal and dissonant musical landscapes in an elegant way. The quartet may also be experienced as a kind of “coming-of-age” story. After the calm first movement’s confident simplicity of youth, the second movement reflects the increasing complications and conflicts of young adulthood, with fraught exploration, the discovery of possible romance, and new tensions now replacing the youthful calm. The third movement reflects on maturity and the experiences of love and loss, before the finale—a set of complex chromatic fugues—evokes the fight against fate and time to achieve one’s goals in life. The movement’s end briefly recapitulates the first movement, suggesting that ultimately life comes full circle as we see the totality of our experience. As LA Opus music critic, John Stodder, said about this work, “The protagonist discovers the presence of life’s purpose.”

Instrumentation: String Quartet
Duration: 19′
Composed: 2019
Published by: Todd Mason