Karim Al-Zand: Music: Strange Machines (String Quartet No. 4)

Strange Machines (String Quartet No. 4)

Wintergatan Marble Machine
Martin Molin (www. wintergatan.net)
Photo: Samuel Westergren (www.wepix.se)

Strange Machines imagines three quirky musical automata. In Alberti Machine we encounter a steam-punk music box, its buttons, levers and dials adjusting a familiar accompanimental pattern until the machine breaks. Bach meets Rube in Goldberg Machine, a contraption that careens between variations in a musical chain reaction. Mannheim Machine is a cliché-bot, an unhinged device that furiously spits out distorted musical tropes from the dawn of the symphony.

Strange Machines was written for the Barlourdet Quartet with support from a Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant.