Aleksandra Kolbusz

Passalega

Long before writing Passalega, I harboured the idea of creating some form of organically homogeneous chain of musical tensions evolving ever more distinctly into a musical utterance, although still indeterminate in terms of pitch. The tissues forming the chain of those tensions were of relatively simple design, yet in spite of this - or perhaps because of it - they were incredibly well suited to generating the expressive narrative that accompanied me throughout that entire pre-composition period. After recognising the character of the musical potential in that material, I considered it to be similar to Baroque rhetoric in terms of the refined clarity and smoothness of the gestures. Inspired by this, I sought to articulate this material in the fullest possible way by tracing a chain of swelling tensions, referring to a homogeneously polyphonic string quartet.