Passion’s Continuum (2023) · 16 min (in five movements)
For String Quartet
Two violins, viola, cello
Commissioned by and written for the Cassatt String Quartet
Program Note
Passion’s Continuum is a work written by Anthony Paul De Ritis for the Cassatt String Quartet (Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower, violins; Rosemary Nelis, viola; Gwen Krosnick, cello).
In searching for an idea for how to start work on this quartet, I turned to a collection of poetry written by my father, Paul Anthony De Ritis (1922-2000), titled Chords of Dust. In a poem titled “The Room,” several references to sound can be found, as well as the phrase “Passion’s Continuum,” which I decided to title this collection of short movements. The bulk of this work was written during the winter break, December 2022, in Berkeley, CA. Special thanks to the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor Ed Campion, current Director of Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, for allowing me to work there during this period.
Passion’s Continuum consists of five movements. “On Chapels of Doom” is based upon the rhythms and harmonies loosely derived from spectral analyses of chapel bells recorded in the Italian Abruzzo, the region where my father was born.
“Our Conflicts Carom Close to Violin Drones” is derived from the spectra of various timpani gestures, struck, rolled, and transposed. I then imagined these sounds bouncing throughout the stone buildings and alleyways of medieval Siena, Italy, late at night; a city where I spent my summers between 2000 and 2006. These gestures then give way to a series of slow moving but energy filled violin drones, which create a kind of meditation before once again giving way to re-imagined timpani booms.
“The Tinkling of Orchestral Bells” imagines the string quartet as a kind of illusory glockenspiel or other collection of dreamed-up bell-like sounds that leverage muted natural and artificial harmonics interspersed with pizzicati open strings.
“On a Cello of Sorrow, Cymbals Will Harrow” references the acoustic envelope and spectra of several cymbals, and miscellaneous metallic devices, struck and scraped in various ways. These gestures serve as bookends to a sorrowful cello solo.
The final movement, “Sweet Remembrance of the Just,” takes its title from a phrase that, as far as I can tell, is a reference from Psalm 112:6 of Tate and Brady’s New Version of the Psalms of David (1696). This phrase is found at the onset of my father’s poem. I found a profound reference to this phrase in The New York Times published on April 25, 1865, written by someone witnessing the “general mourning” of the crowd at the religious observances at the capital upon the death of Abraham Lincoln. This article closes with the fully referenced phrase, “The sweet remembrance of the just, Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust.” This provides a context for my father’s struggle with the meaning of life and religion, which pervades so much of his poetry. For me, after composing this movement based upon a transcription of a sketch built from keyboard improvisations, which in turn became focused as a series of “remembrances” that my father (or perhaps those from a crowd of mourners) might have had when grappling with such profound questions. As a result, I sought to include several written descriptions that reference religiosity, ultimately to a “solemn and overpowering” effect (to once again quote from the article on the aforementioned religious observances).
This movement, and the content that it struggles with, now takes on an even deeper personal meaning, as I struggle with the death of my younger brother Louis Michael De Ritis and his wife Renée in a tragic boating accident off the south shore of Long Island on September 3, 2023.The premiere of the first four movements of Passion’s Continuum took place on August 1, 2023, during the The Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music in Vinalhaven, Maine, from July 25 – August 5, 2023. [Note: violist Andy Lin served brilliantly as a substitute violist during the performances at the Seal Bay Festival]. The premiere of all five movements together took place at the Fenway Center, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, on September 22, 2023.
YouTube
Poem
“The sweet remembrance of the just,
Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust.”
Tate and Brady, New Version of the Psalms of David: Psalm 112:6
The Room by Paul Anthony De Ritis
Come with the music friend,
Where notes are people,
And money in medleys pale,
Over the lean green steeples,
Falls
On chapels of doom.
O do come in the room and
Listen to the tympani’s boom,
Our conflicts will carom
Close to violin drones.
O come listen to the tinkling
Of orchestra bells wrinkling.
High, ho, the merry O
The world is very well.
Now passion’s continuum
In the glow of red gloaming,
Now bursting, now foaming,
As waves on endless seas roaming,
Roaming the rises, roaming the falls,
Ends without ending at all.
Do not leave the room
We get to the core
Of shrill rills screaming,
Come listen on a cushion,
Where percussion goes clashing
And crashing everlastingly on
Dead ear drums of time,
And they could be yours,
Or they could be mine.
Come fellow, into the room, and
Mellow on a cello of sorrow,
For the cymbals will harrow,
The soils of your spoils.
High, Ho, the merry O
The world is very well.
O do not leave the room,
There is more music,
Its sad notes are everlasting.
Yes, they will be passing,
Ever on and on course,
Of course without any end,
Without any end at all
In the room.