Crudele, acerba, inesorabile morte… (2017)
after a madrigal by Luca Marenzio
string quartet

Just finished a small project yesterday, for string quartet, based on a madrigal by Luca Marenzio ("Crudele, acerba..."). I suppose it leans more toward being an arrangement than a composition, but I feel that I've shaped the material in certain (even "invasive") ways that it feels very much mine (you can't "collaborate" with history, right? Only co-opt it?).

Unfortunately it's one of those pieces that is difficult probably for very annoying reasons (lots of octave doublings on a single instrument, thick polyphonic texture, copious senza vibrato passages... I expect intonation and balance issues to be unreasonable), so who knows if/when I'll get to hear it.

But in the meantime, the score for this piece is available on IMSLP. Please let me know if you are interested in performing it.