String Quartet #4 "The Planet on the Table"

Wallace Stevens' poem "The Planet on the Table" begins -

"Ariel was glad he had written his poems,
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked."

In this string quartet, also entitled "The Planet on the Table", my planet is made of the music and sounds of a remembered time or of something heard that I liked.

The quartet has five movements, each headed by a quotation from one of Stevens' poems* as a point of departure or pathway into those remembered sounds and music:

I. Mrs. Anderson's Swedish Baby
II. She Measured the Hour
III. Scene 10 Becomes 11
IV. Someone Has Walked Across the Snow
V. His Self and the Sun

Like Stevens, my self and the sun are one, and my music, like his poetry, although makings of my self, is also makings of the sun. Stevens wrote it was not important that his poetry survive, which is also true of my work.

What matters is that my music, like his poetry, should bear some lineament or character, some affluence, if only half perceived in the poverty of its sounds, of the planet of which it was part.

Martin Bresnick

*Sources for the titles:

I. The Pleasures of Merely Circulating
II. The Idea of Order at Key West
III. Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion
IV. Vacancy in the Park
V. The Planet on the Table

String Quartet #4 "The Planet on the Table" was commissioned for the Brentano String Quartet by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting for the Segerstrom Center for the Arts Chamber Music Series

The world premiere took place at the 92nd Street Y in New York on March 9, 2019