Last year I wrote a song cycle called One Long Year. This year, I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do with it, if anything. This month, I’m recording my setting of Psalm 149 for a new Cardiphonia compilation. Today I had a string quartet scheduled to add some tracks to that project.
But you know me: if I have a string quartet showing up to record, how can I resist writing something new and non-obligatory for the occasion? So instead of the many things I should have been doing today, I felt compelled to write a string quartet arrangement of “All Hallow’s Eve” from One Long Year . This recording is the second take and third time they’d ever played the piece. Pretty good, I say.
By the way, the quartet has never really settled on a name for themselves. I hereby dub them the Sine Nomine Quartet–the No Name Four.
