Glenn Stallcop

String Quintet (or String Orchestra)

Composer's Note:

I don’t generally consider myself to be a melancholy person. I try to keep up and incorporate cultural improvements as best as I can, using what I need and allowing the new to stimulate my imagination. But, of course, I am prone to reflection at times, especially when I come across something which seems to mimic a situation in the past. My memories seem to take the form of snippets, bits and pieces, sometimes rather disassociated from the main event. They just seem to bubble up to the surface of my attention, usually to my amusement. They are an interesting, if not exactly novel, part of senior life and they have a decided, if not always positive, effect on my attitude. It is those “vestiges” which form the main subject matter of this work.

I have arranged these memories into two movements: Reflection, which features often forgotten emotional memories, and Rekindling, focusing on forgotten ideas, which, though usually forgotten for a reason, can actually be inspiring at times. The specific memories are not important. The music of both movements is in a state of rather freeform continually evolving variation. There are ideas which hold the music together, but they tend to be glue and not the main events.   

Like much of my recent music, the movements are reworked and reimagined tracks from my piano albums. Reflection is inspired by “Morning,” the first track of the album Simple Riffs, and Rekindling is inspired by “Search for Purpose,” the first track of the album Campaign. The first movement is actually much easier to recognize than the second, which has been significantly transformed. The work is written for string quintet (with double bass), and is quite suitable to be performed with string orchestra. It was written during the Spring and early Summer of 2025 at my home near Ash Fork, AZ.