HELL

Liza LIM
Born 1966, Perth, Australia

HELL (1992)

violin I, violin II, viola, violoncello
Commissioned by Milano Musica
Published by Ricordi, catalogue 135889

HELL was commissioned by Milano Musica and first performed by the Arditti String Quartet in June 1992.

HELL:

its meaning in English
Also in German, `hell´ -- light, clear
`hellseher´ -- clairvoyant
`hellhörig´ -- perceptive

In the early 1990s, my compositional process focussed on the physicality of performance, the relationships that exist between the musician's body and the instrument. In HELL, the music seeks to examine and `hear´ ever more finely the interstices of the sounds of contact between fingertip and string, bodily pressure and velocity transmitted through vibrating hair and wood, and to compose the behaviour of sounds into constellations of action. A non-homogenous approach to string playing emphasises the transitional, fragile and unstable tones and the unpredictable occurrence of extraneous sounds such as harmonics, distortion and scraping noises.

HELL is not a string quartet in the `classical´ argumentative tradition. There is no `final solution´ but instead one can draw an analogy with the puzzles presented by, for instance, those elaborately decorated Chinese boxes which one twists and turns in all directions without gaining entry and whose `solutions´ turn out to be an elusive illusion.

Programme note © Liza LIM