Transposed Score
PERUSALSCORE
SUGAR
quartet for flute, B-flat clarinet, violin, and cell0 commissioned by Music in the American Wild
by Griffin Candey
PERUSALSCORE
Sugar
for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello
PERUSALSCORE
Griffin Candey
2022
I. Tea
II. Sugar
Program Note
When Dan and Emlyn of Music in the American Wild approached me about writing a Midwest-centric piece for their upcoming tour, I was living in Marquette, Michigan—a remote little city of just under 25,000 people in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, right on the shore of Lake Superior. It was a place that I never saw myself ending up, but that ended up shaping an incredible amount of what I do, especially in its proximity to vast tracts of wild forest and shorelines. It’s hard not to feel small in the presence of all of that—but it’s a productive kind of small, a small that reveals the interconnectedness of all of us, the places around us, and the responsibilities of that relationship. Sugar is a little love note to that part of the world.
The first movement, Tea, celebrates the many, many rivers in the Upper Peninsula. A lot of these rivers—from the Little Garlic River that curls along just north of Marquette to the big, famous Tahquamenon Falls to the east—take on a reddish hue from the tannins leached from fallen leaves, giving them a kind of rusty color that always reminded me a little of tea. The second movement, Sugar, refers to a certain kind of snow: in the coldest bits of winter, when temperatures get down in the single (or negative) digits, snow ceases to stick to itself and instead becomes an active thing, almost an entity. Heavy winds off of the lake pick it up and apply that snow to every angle of every surface of a thing, every inch of every branch, every pine needle, every nook within the jagged shoreline. It gives everything a kind of surreal, meticulous look: as though someone had gone through and applied a thin veneer of sugar to the world.
Movements
I. Tea
II. Sugar
Instrumentation
flute, clarinet, violin, and cello
Duration: 12'
First printing, August 2024
Copyright ©2022 Griffin Candey. All Rights Reserved. Program Note Copyright ©2022 Griffin Candey. All Rights Reserved Published by Just a Theory Press | www.justatheorypress.com
U G A R
fragile, hanging suspended non-coord. for m. 1-5 — coordinated arrivals and attacks indicated with vertical dotted line
enter al niente; then, whip upwards, like a gust of wind
(nebenstimme) (haupstimme)
PERUSALSCORE
shimmering, as if from a distance
violin and cello: play around with bowing placement mm. 1-14, push gently between sul tasto and sul ponticello, creating pockets of dullness and brightness
all: entire movement should have minimal vibrato from all four instruments, except for the occasional moments of bigger, more dramatic dynamic peaks
Clarinet in B b
Violin
Cello
quick, light harmonic trill, sul II — touch 4, 5, 6, and octave, in random order — trill quickens or slows with crescendi and descrescendi, respectively
slow down harm. trill gradually until it becomes individually placed notes in mm. 60-62
PERUSALSCORE
