Anon

Anon (2019-2020)

-for String Quartet

Duration: approx. 8 minutes 30 seconds

Difficulty: Advanced

Download includes full score and complete set of performance parts.

Anon is the third movement of my string quartet A Room of Her Own, a four-movement work that acts as an 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’.

Anon is an investigation of the quote "I would venture to guess that Anon... was often a woman." In the full string quartet, the second movement Epigraph presents, fragments, and then disintegrates themes by Margaret Sutherland, Clara Schumann, and Rebecca Clarke. Anon knits them back together again in a quasi-Sonata form- a musical form historically considered to belong to ‘serious’ music, and thus the domain of men. The music is stubborn and persistent, bordering on aggressive and hostile, but also tender, bittersweet, and startingly alive. 

A Room of Her Own was the recipient of both the APRA/AMCOS Art Music Award for Chamber Work of the Year (2021) and the Albert H Maggs Composition Award (2021).