Artellia

Artellia is a double string quartet of opposing ensembles which gradually form into a unified octet. The main idea of the piece is an exploration of the continuum between pitch and noise, and how it operates in different contexts. Initially, one quartet establishes a timbre-texture of stochastic harmonics, which is destabilized by inharmonic pitch and noise in the second quartet. The noise figures here, which are created by expanding and contracting microtonal clusters, reoccur throughout the piece to achieve different ends. In the second section, which is dominated by white noise in the second quartet, the first quartet plays similar clusters which, in this new context, operate as pitch material. In the final section, microtonal clusters are recontextualized as harmonic partials of chords which emerge beneath them.