Gloria Mui - Zvukova Bitka

The title of the string quartet Zvukova Bitka in Slovakian means sound battle. The inspiration to create this composition are the different extended techniques that can be achieved using string instruments (bowing on the tailpiece, bowing behind the bridge, con legno battuto...). In this string quartet, I try to imagine different ways in which these techniques could be combined to produce contrasting and homogenous texture. This work is divided into three sections: introduction, first section, and second section. In the introduction, the long notes appear one by one on each instruments (from cello to first violin) at first extremely quietly (ppp) to finish in fortissimo. In the first section, different materials and techniques are combined to produce contrasting textures with short silences interspaced in-between musical gestures. The tapping in this section evokes the sound like human voice as a continuous whisper. In the second section, all the contrasting materials come together to produce a polyrhythmic texture, where different subdivisions of the pulse (6; 7; 8 and 9) are stacked in blocks of sound that are transformed into glissandi at the end of the piece.