Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival - radio programme transcripts (6)

Programme 6

(Quatuor Bozzini)

It’s music that touches me. It’s music that’s very human, very communicative, very deep and also very varied. We worked with James Tenney directly in 2004 and he wrote his last piece ever for us in 2006.

The pieces have been played but never in the UK. Huddersfield should expect to discover one of the most interesting and exciting composers of the second half of the 20th Century.

If you go out of the usual major/minor classical music context, if you divide the steps between notes into smaller units, which if you’re not used to listening to them they might seem strange. But actually, the more you listen the more you get accustomed to it and start to really like it.

He does different types of micro-tonality, always on the natural harmonics. So, he takes a fundamental and he works with all the divisions of that note. Even the foreign notes of that chord, they are really part of that same basic note. Although it’s not used in composed music, but it’s part of any composed music. Any note has all those overtones.

It sounds strange and strangely familiar at the same time. Have you heard Tibetan monks’ throat singing for instance? Same principle. It’s something which is very fundamental in physics and music. Yes, it provides an enormous “sky” of sounds.

In our programme, there are also two transcriptions of Beatles’ songs done by Jim (composer James Tenney). He had kind-of two sides also. All this music, pop music and blues, is part of his personal heritage. You can be a contemporary new music composer and you can still love The Beatles.

We’re from Canada. We’re touring Europe for two weeks and we came to play these three concerts in Huddersfield.

(Voice over)

Contributors: Stephanie Bozzini, Isabelle Bozzini, Clemens Merkel and Nardia Frankavilla - Quatuor Bozzini.
 
Music: Cognate Canons by James Tenney, performed by Quatuor Bozzini in rehearsal at St Paul's Hall, Huddersfield.
 
Festival shorts are produced by Beaumont Street Studios.