Updated Recording: Then: for those who are no more (string quartet)
Listen to a new rendering of a string quartet by Michael Carnes
A rendering of a piece always misses the mark in many ways. You’re asking technology to do what humans do much better. I’ve not been satisfied with renders of this string quartet. Recently I’ve been using a new technology that allows me to get much closer to my intentions. Still not perfect, but I think we’re at the point when any ensemble considering the piece will have a fair idea of what they’re getting into.
This piece is dark and contemplative, in keeping with its title. Please click the button below to learn more, listen to the piece and request a score.
Then: for those who are no more
This is a sort of memento mori, written in 2021 during the still-growing wave of Covid. My original intention was to write a sort of memorial piece for those who had been taken by this disease. But I expanded it to take note of all the dead everywhere: all who had once lived but are no more. The only thing stranger than death may be life itself. There is a time in life when we experience the world as ourselves. We think what we think, see what we see, and experience a panoply of emotions.
At death, that all ends. But we still live in a more indirect way in the thoughts and memories of those who knew us. But in time they pass, and perhaps we still appear in family histories with an even dimmer glow. And at some point that’s gone as well. But all of us, present and past, are likely to have some recollection of a time we were most alive. We think of that as Then.
This piece has not yet received a performance, but I hope that changes before long. For now, you’re welcome to listen to a high-quality digital rendering