String Quartet String Quartet - Level 4 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1024067

Composed by Roger Ramirez. Contemporary. Score and parts. 30 pages. Roger Ramirez #2965795. Published by Roger Ramirez (A0.1024067).

Approximate Duration: 6' 15

This piece is inspired by the 1925 poem by T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. The piece utilizes serialism inspired techniques in order to better demonstrate the time period and subject matter of the poem. The juxtaposition of very high and very low notes emphasizes the hollow nature of the poem and furthers it with a sense of misdirection. This is done by taking recurring parts and flipping them backwards, cutting twelve-tone rows in half and putting them in two different instruments, and by having interjections that resemble the impressionist period that came before. The end of the piece quotes the nursery rhyme Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush in a sort of dark, twisted way, much like The Hollow Men poem does. The ending is morphed to fit a very hollow feeling and to convey the final lines of the poem:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

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