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This is the first movement of my String Quartet #1, but it functions as a stand-alone piece.
George Bellows is probably most famous for his series of boxing paintings, of which Dempsey and Firpo is one of his last. It depicts the 1923 fight between Jack Dempsey (the “Manassa Mauler”) and the Argentinian Luis Firpo (the “Wild Bull of the Pampas”), a battle which has often been called the most brutal and exciting boxing championship match ever. Bellows’ style toward the end of his career embraced the principles of “Dynamic Symmetry,” an aesthetic stance which favored precisely arranged geometrical forms according to naturally occurring ratios. Dempsey and Firpo features a “root five rectangle,” which can be drawn in a series of steps using only a compass and straightedge. I used this process in selecting a group of chords and rhythms from which the movement is constructed, and to generate form.
