White Water: String Quartet No. 5

Joan Tower's White Water - String Quartet No. 5. Score and parts.

White Water is the first of four commissions for Chamber Music Monterey Bay's 'Arc of Life' project. Theartist Bill Viola shared excerpts from his video installation 'Going Forth by Day' — a depiction of life in all its stages — with the four composers, who then created compositions inspired by this.

'When I saw [Bill]Viola's work, I was quite fascinated with how he used water as an encompassing image which influenced everything I saw about the 'person' inside the water. My piece is not directly associated by what he specifically did but itdoes have a strong connection to the image of water as a powerful basic idea and action. The many glissandos hopefully create a 'fluid' environment that connects the various ideas and registers together, while 'white water'somehow implies more rapid 'cascading' types of action which occur throughout the piece' - Joan Tower