ABSTRACT

There was a lot of parallel writing in the First Quartet. It was not strictly parallel. The first movement of the Second Quartet was a separate piece that became the first movement of Streams. Obviously, many features of the Second Quartet come from the initial conditions that were attached to the first movement: it was to be a reaction to Bach. In a way, the Quartet overall is everything we could have hoped for, because this really does seem like not only a homage to Bach, but a complete absorption of what Bach is in another idiom, or what Bach can mean to a very cultured musician.