A Room of Her Own

A Room of Her Own (2019-20)

-for string quartet

Duration: approx. 30 minutes

Difficulty: Advanced

Note- the 1st and 4th movements feature parts for bowed crotales and bowed cymbal, played by members of the quartet.

A Room of Her Own is my essay and personal reflection upon the requirements for prosperous creativity. In it, I explore the delicate balance between the realm of the creator and the work being created, taking inspiration from quotes gathered from Virginia Woolf’s seminal text ‘A Room of One’s Own’.

The work is in four movements. When played in its entirety, the movements progress attacca (without pause). If desired, Movements 1, 3 & 4 may be performed independently of the other movements.

I. Web  "...imaginative work (is) like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."  

II. Epigraph  

III. Anon  "I would venture to guess that Anon... was often a woman."  

IV. Incandescence  "The mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in (her), must be incandescent.... There must be no obstacle in it."

The music opens with Web, a fragile meditation performed by solo cello, accompanied by an off-stage ‘choir’ of bowed crotales. In Epigraph, the off-stage performers return and introduce us to musical themes by composers Margaret Sutherland, Clara Schumann and Rebecca Clarke. These themes then become the primary musical material for Anon, an aggressive and hostile, but occasionally tender homage to forgotten voices of the musical canon. A poignant viola solo announces Incandescence: a hymn to self-awareness, acceptance, and vulnerability.