SCRATCH (2012)

The prevailing glissando gestures give way shortly before the work’s close to a sudden and surprising moment of clarity, in which all four instruments join forces in a single, melodic line of legato chords in rhythmic unison. The four instruments quickly disperse again, however, and the work finishes on a splintering of col legno and, finally, a return to the opening scratch-tones. Unlike the earlier Fragment, SCRATCH flows as a largely cohesive movement, and treats the string quartet as a single entity, rather than a deliberately disparate collection of four individual instruments.

Alwyn Tomas Westbrooke

The short movement SCRATCH joins the earlier Fragment and the youthful String Quartet No. 1 as one of Žuraj’s rare forays into the string quartet genre. “Scratch-tones” are the timbres string players produce by drawing the bow across the strings with excessive pressure. The result typically has no defined pitch, and can range from a tender, abstract “scratching” to an aggressive “crunch”. SCRATCH opens with a plethora of such tones in varying dynamics, followed by an interplay of glissando contours, each featuring one of the numerous timbral variations typical of string instruments – from massive chords across all four strings to ricochets with the wood of the bow (col legno) and pizzicato. The prevailing glissando gestures give way shortly before the work’s close to a sudden and surprising moment of clarity, in which all four instruments join forces in a single, melodic line of legato chords in rhythmic unison. The four instruments quickly disperse again, however, and the work finishes on a splintering of col legno and, finally, a return to the opening scratch-tones. Unlike the earlier Fragment, SCRATCH flows as a largely cohesive movement, and treats the string quartet as a single entity, rather than a deliberately disparate collection of four individual instruments.

Alwyn Tomas Westbrooke