Glenn Stallcop

String Trio

Composer's Note:

Buddhism teaches of the impermanence of all things.  If ever there was a period of history in which transience should be self-evident, it should be now.  However, having spent my entire career immersed in the field of Classical Music, as a performer and composer, I have become used to my working parameters being relatively fixed.  One rarely finds anybody able to stay in the same profession for a lifetime, let alone the same job doing the same thing, as I have done as a symphony orchestra musician. 

But even Classical Music has made substantial changes in the last few decades, and as I approach my final decades, I find some of the fundamental principles that have dominated the art form to be slowly crumbling away.  Some of the changes, such as a computerized creative process, have brought great spurts of imaginative inspiration and have streamlined a cumbersome developmental process.  But I also feel the erosion of cultural norms that all seniors have faced for centuries, and I can’t help thinking that at least part of it is unusual, permanent, and tragic.

Evanescence (2026), for string trio, addresses the feeling of loss, but it also tries to celebrate that which we understand and cherish, despite its questionable future.  The first movement, Nocturne, centers around a gesture which takes a deep breath. The music veers off in other directions but always returns to the breath, like meditation.  I think the title refers more symbolically to the sunset of one’s life rather than nightfall, and is about attempting to hold on to that which we have found significant.  The second movement, Elegy, is more directly about loss.  There is a lot more to eulogize these days than close acquaintances. 

The last movement is more a celebration of now, an immersion in the present.  The title “Quintiola” is a made-up variant of “hemiola,” but instead of 3:2, “quintiola” refers to 5:2.  The actual musical term for that ratio is dupla sesquialtera, but that seems a bit cumbersome for the name of a movement.  The work is a joyous dance, but the 5/4 meter actually gives the piece some breadth and an unusually relaxed atmosphere, despite the activity.  The opening starts quietly with the pizzicato viola and cello, while the violin seems rather hung over from the emotional despair of the elegy but gets with the celebration eventually. The opening appears in the middle of the movement arco ponticello in a more light-hearted fashion and then returns triumphantly at the end. 

The work is only the second string trio I have written, the first dating from 1974 over fifty years ago.  It was a medium I had often thought of revisiting, and some recent performances recharged my interest, in particular a trio by the under-appreciated composer Max Reger performed in Phoenix by the ensemble Urban Nocturnes.