Inverted Cathedrals

Inverted Cathedrals Ján Števuliak

for Waldstein Quartet

Ján Števuliak

Inverted Cathedrals String Quartet

Full Score

Duration ca. 4 minutes

Ján Števuliak (b. 1999) is a composer, organist, sound artist, performance artist and author of installations. Raised in a rural environment of the Orava region in Slovakia, his early musical education was influenced by folk and church music. Starting studies in London led him to explore and experiment with different genres and processes of creating instrumental music. Ideas such as reevaluation, impressions from different cultures, perception of returns to the past and nomadic feelings have influenced his recent works greatly. Ján’s music and its concepts are also reflecting on the subjective or objective human connection to its surroundings and the impact exerted by individual or humankind on the environment. Sonic features in Ján’s works are often a result of finding a way of translating extra-musical phenomena, working with thematic restraints, aleatorism or post-processing.

Ján is a recipient of both composition and organ performance prizes (XXII Gorazd Organ Days 2017, John Halford Composition Prize 2022), graduated from Trinity Laban Conservatoire with FIrst Class Honours and is studying towards a masters degree at the Sibelius Academy.

An image that keeps lingering in my mind after my past visits to Lake District and Snowdonia is the vastness of slate mines and quarries, particularly the Dinorwic quarry. The impact of resourcing has continuously influenced many of my musical works.

Slate keeps our homes dry, carries our food, paves our walkways or reminds us of our loved ones. The by-product of our utilisation takes shape of what I would like to call an inverted cathedral, in an allusion to John Ruskin’s words. One is surrounded by soaring stone walls and a sheer space with reverberant acoustics.

Musical aspects of this work are inspired by real places in the Lake District- flooded tunnels of the Hodge Close Quarry, Yew Crag incline in Honister, airy acoustics of the Cathedral Cave or the terraces of the Elterwater Quarry. Music is also subjectively responding to the work of Julian Cooper, a Lakeland painter- his landscapes are related to the aforementioned places and have a unifying element of a rocky grey colour- conveyed by recurrence of motives and harmonies. An underlining acoustic theme throughout the quartet is a sound that is supposed to revive a stone-chipping soundscape of a Slate tile workshop.

London, Ambleside, July- August 2022 Premiered in Kendal Town Hall on 6 August 2022

by Waldstein Quartet during the Lake District Summer Festival

With many thanks to Waldstein Quartet, namely Greta Papa, Daniel Pukach, Natalia Solis Paredes and Miguel Ángel Villeda Cerón.

Thanks to Cecilia McDowall for ideas and solutions to problems that arose while workshopping this piece.

Thanks to Stephen Threlfall, the artistic director of Lake District Summer Festival for the opportunity to stay in the Lake District and write this work, as well as the rest of the dedicated team behind this unique festival.

Instructions -material is often presented in the boxes. These are mainly to be performed freely for the duration of the line that succeeds the boxes. Please notice these in advance -this piece calls for players to perform asynchronously in different tempi- these textures are supposed to resemble a piece of slate being chipped into a tile. The strings do not need to be stopped but may be. This is left at discretion of the performers -cellist acts as a facilitator in the performance, especially during the asynchronous parts -crescendo and diminuendo from and to nothing is used often throughout. Where not possible, an effort to realise al niente attack is welcome but not necessary -accidentals last one bar -cross-head notes are to be touched lightly and not allowed to resonate for long, if not called for stopped note

4

Inverted Cathedrals Ján Števuliak (b. 1999)

faster than cello, ca. q = 120

° 4 &4

Col legno battuto III

q = 86 Somewhat repetitive

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ca. 15s

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( = repeat boxed material for the duration of the line, alternate strikes from 4 to 7, leaving rest after each repetition)

duration ca. 4'30' 3 August 2022 Ambleside, UK

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