Momenta Quartet plays Julián Carrillo

The Momenta Quartet performs works by Mexican microtonal maverick Julián Carrillo (1875–1965); including the Boston premieres of his string quartets nos. 1 and 4.

Momenta Quartet
Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin
Alex Shiozaki, violin
Stephanie Griffin, viola
Michael Haas, cello

String Quartet No. 4 (1932)*
1. Muy agitado
2. Lento
3. Casi scherzo
4. Allegro

String Quartet No. 8 (ca. 1959)
1. Poco mosso
2. Lentamente
3. Scherzo (Allegretto)
4. Final (Allegro)

Intermission

String Quartet No. 1 (1903)*
1. Maestoso-Allegretto
2. Scherzo
3. Largo
4. Final (Maestoso-Allegretto)

*Boston premiere

Julián Carrillo (1875-1965) was born in Ahualulco, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He received his training in composition, violin, and conducting at Mexico’s Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico City, the Königliches Konservatorium der Musik in Leipzig, Germany, and the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Ghent, Belgium. After his return to Mexico, he was named professor at the Conservatorio Nacional, founded the Beethoven Orchestra and the Beethoven Quartet, and became one of the most influential musicians in pre-revolutionary Mexico City. In 1924, after the Mexican Revolution, he deviced one of the first microtonal systems in the Western art music tradition; he called it El Sonido 13 (The Thirteenth Sound). From that year until the end of his life, Carrillo devoted himself to composing microtonal music, theorizing about it, and promoting his microtonal system. He died of cancer in his house of Mexico City on September 9, 1965.

Between 1903 and 1964 Carrillo composed thirteen string quartets. Notwithstanding its being a unique collection of major works for string quartet by one of Latin America’s foremost composers, this repertory has received little attention from performers and musicologists. Taken as a cycle, Carrillo’s string quartets show the diversity of aesthetic tendencies developed and embraced by the composer throughout his long artistic career. From the conservative but vibrant idiom of his early works at the beginning of the twentieth century to the modernist atonal works of the 1940s to the uncompromising microtonal avant-gardism of his last compositions in the 1960s, the wide diversity of Carrillo’s artistic voices speaks loud and clear through this extraordinary body of works.

The Momenta Quartet is embarked on a multi-annual project that had it premiere many of these works in a variety of national and international venues, including the prestigious Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico, Mexico’s Fonoteca Nacional, the Americas Society in New York, and concerts at Cornell University, and Harvard University. Today’s concert at Harvard University features the Boston premiere of string quartets nos. 1 and 4, as transcribed from the original manuscripts by Alejandro L. Madrid.

——Alejandro L. Madrid

Momenta: the plural of momentum – four individuals in motion towards a common goal. This is the idea behind the Momenta Quartet, whose eclectic vision encompasses contemporary music of all aesthetic backgrounds alongside great music from the recent and distant past. The New York City-based quartet has premiered over 100 works, collaborated with over 120 living composers and was praised by The New York Times for its “diligence, curiosity and excellence.” In the words of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “few American players assume Haydn’s idiom with such ease.”

The quartet came into being in November 2004, when composer Matthew Greenbaum invited violist Stephanie Griffin to perform Mario Davidovsky’s String Trio for events celebrating Judaism and Culture at New York’s Symphony Space and Temple University in Philadelphia. A residency through the composition department at Temple University ensued, and the rehearsals and performances were so satisfying that the players decided to form a quartet.

Word of Momenta’s passionate advocacy for emerging composers spread quickly. Composers started inviting Momenta for similar concerts and residencies at other academic institutions, among them Cornell, Columbia and Yeshiva Universities; the Boston and Cincinnati Conservatories; and the Eastman School of Music. In 2008 the quartet won its first major commission grant from the Koussevitzky Foundation for Malaysian composer Kee Yong Chong, and since received a second Koussevitzky grant for Bolivian composer Agustín Fernández. Deeply committed to the musical avant-garde of the developing world, Momenta has been an indispensable advocate for many international composers. In addition to world premieres by Chong and Fernández, Momenta has premiered and championed the works of Alvin Singleton (USA), Tony Prabowo (Indonesia), Cergio Prudencio (Bolivia) and Hana Ajiashvili (Georgia). Current recording adventures include recording all thirteen string quartets by Julián Carrillo for the Naxos label; the complete string quartets of Roberto Sierra; and an American album featuring diverse works by Elizabeth Brown, Jason Hwang, Shawn Jaeger, Yusef Lateef, and Matthew Greenbaum.

Photo Credit: John Gurrin, Nana Shi

Host or Publisher Harvard University Music Department