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"REVENGE BODY"
by Griffin Candey
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Revenge Body (String Quartet No. 1)
for string quartet
1. Wishful Thinking 2. The Rest Will Take Care of Itself 3. Revenge Body
Griffin Candey
Program Note
Revenge Body is part of a series of works I wrote over four or five years about youth—not to memorialize or idolize youth, but to present it in its sort of plain, true, messiest form. (Plenty of youth-oriented works exist, but they're often written through rose-colored, retrospective lenses, presenting youth as an idyllic time with no low points or learning curves.)
The first movement, Wishful Thinking, is just that: the youthful penchant for assuming everything will shake out for the best—everyone's on your side, the world wants to buoy you up. We all then experience, at some point, that big snapping point—an argument that dissolves a relationship, an injury, a rattling failure—and it reshapes us overnight.
The second movement, The Rest Will Take Care of Itself, is the other side of that same coin: the idea that, if we follow the thing we're passionate about, everything else will streamline around it (organizationally, financially,) when the reality is often quite the opposite. This references the often well-intentioned but deeply unhelpful phrase that folks say when suggesting that passion, by itself, is sufficient: “do what you love, and the rest will take care of itself.”
The third movement, Revenge Body, is about perceiving ourselves. The literal (and deeply unhealthy) original meaning of the phrase is one of self-punishment, a brutal process of exercise and deprivation after a break up in order to achieve a “perfect” body, done only to spite the former partner. Out of context, however, the words took on a different meaning for me, especially having struggled for years with body dysmorphia: the idea of cherishing your body regardless of how it is socially perceived—the idea that a body that is authentically itself can be revenge enough against those who would judge or ask us to change.
Movements
1. Wishful Thinking 2. The Rest Will Take Care of Itself
Revenge Body
String quartet
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Duration: 10 minutes
String Quartet No. 1
Haltingly {q = c 120-128}
composed by Griffin Candey
Violin I
Violin II Viola
Cello
A Piacere, cued from Violincello {q = x}
[molto sul tasto; fade into tone, remain sul tasto and retain thin, ghostly sound]
[reattack when necessary]
[play behind bridge, on E string — punta d'arco]
[re-attack, harsh tone, long bowstroke + quick dimin.]
[molto sul tasto fade into sul tasto; retain a ghostly sound]
a piacere
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Cello
[gradual sul tasto al niente, even if it sacrifices your clarity of tone]
[the tuplet gestures in mm. 19-29 should be interpreted as a gesture of acceleration, not precisely or mathematically]
[slight gliss.]
[gradual sul tasto al niente, even if it sacrifices your clarity of tone]
Mvmt 3 — Revenge Body
composed by Griffin Candey
[crescendo to scratch tone, very harsh]
[al tallone] [al tallone] [al tallone] [al tallone]
[sul tasto, with increased weight on accents]
[heavy glissando up on D string to unspecific pitch; then, land heavily on accented double stop in m. 58]
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