Program Notes
Earth Song
September 13 and 14, 2025
String Quartet Op 76 #4 (Sunrise)
Composer: Joseph Haydn
Composer and court musician from the 1700's. Did lots to develop classical music as we know it today. Was supposedly a super nice guy.
What's the deal with the name?
Haydn probably didn’t give this quartet the name "Sunrise" (although I can’t tell you definitively that he didn’t). Most likely it came from the public somewhere along the way. The name is descriptive of the opening of the first movement, where the first violin rises out of beautiful, glowing opening chords like a ….
Why is Haydn such a big deal?
Lots of reasons, but if we’re talking about string quartets (let's do that because all the reasons would be too many words for right now), he sort of invented them. He didn’t TOTALLY invent them - there was music written for this combination of instruments before him, but all the parts weren’t written equally in those pieces - there was a solo line and accompaniment parts. Haydn made all the parts equally important, and wrote the first string quartet as we know them sometime in the 1750s. He went on to write 68 quartets in his lifetime. They tend to get better as he goes. The Opus 76 set is his last set of quartets, and some people think it’s his best.
The Little Things
Composer: Kian Ravaei
Brilliant twenty-something lover of music of all stripes, proud representative of the Iranian-American community and current doctoral student at Juilliard.
Work: The Little Things
A 7 movement string quartet featuring the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Commissioned in 2023 by the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and Seattle Chamber Music Society.
Why we love it
This piece is evocative of exactly what it says it is. There are musical spiders, birds, butterflies, snakes, the essence of the sun and moon, and a heartfelt call for compassion for all living things. We love it all, but the spider is particularly awesome.
What does Kian say about it?
Something very well written. He says...
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All seven titles which comprise The Little Things come from Emily Dickinson, who never fails to direct our attention toward nature’s easily overlooked wonders. Movements II, III, IV, and VI evoke various animal life, while I and V portray the sun and moon respectively. The order of the movements suggests the cyclic journey of all living things from morning to night and back to a new morning.
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Can I read the poems now?
You may. Click the button. When you're done, click the button at the end to read the rest of the program notes.
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Plan and Elevation
Composer: Caroline Shaw
Composer, violinist, vocalist, all around musician extraordinaire. Winner of Grammys, Pulitzer Prizes and mother of dragons (no not really). (But maybe).
Work: Plan & Elevation: The Grounds of Dumbarton Oaks
A string quartet made up of musical descriptions of different aspects of the beautiful gardens and grounds of the Dumbarton Oaks estate. Commissioned by Dumbarton Oaks, and premiered by the Dover Quartet in the music room of Dumbarton Oaks on November 1, 2015.
Why is it on this program?
Okay, so we messed with it a bit. For the purposes of today's concerts, we expanded the intention of this quartet to include the whole of our planet rather than the grounds of one estate. We hope that Caroline won't mind. We assume that she won't - she seems to be pretty cool and chill.
What does Caroline say?
I have always loved drawing the architecture around me when traveling, and some of my favorite lessons in musical composition have occurred by chance in my drawing practice over the years. While writing a string quartet to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Dumbarton Oaks, I returned to these essential ideas of space and proportion — to the challenges of trying to represent them on paper. The title, Plan & Elevation, refers to two standard ways of representing architecture — essentially an orthographic, or “bird’s eye,” perspective (“plan”), and a side view which features more ornamental detail (“elevation”). This binary is also a gentle metaphor for one’s path in any endeavor — often the actual journey and results are quite different (and perhaps more elevated) than the original plan.
I was fortunate to have been the inaugural music fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in 2014-15. Plan & Elevation examines different parts of the estate’s beautiful grounds and my personal experience in those particular spaces. Each movement is based on a simple ground bass line which supports a different musical concept or character. “The Ellipse” considers the notion of infinite repetition (I won’t deny a tiny Kierkegaard influence here). One can walk around and around the stone path, beneath the trimmed hornbeams, as I often did as a way to clear my mind while writing. The second movement, “The Cutting Garden,” is a fun fragmentation of various string quartets (primarily Ravel, Mozart K. 387, and my own Entr’acte, Valencia, and Punctum), referencing the variety of flowers grown there before they meet their inevitable end as cuttings for display. “The Herbaceous Border” is spare and strict at first, like the cold geometry of French formal gardens with their clear orthogonals (when viewed from the highest point), before building to the opposite of order: chaos. The fourth movement, “The Orangery,” is evokes the slim, fractured shadows in that room as the light tries to peek through the leaves of the aging fig vine. We end with my favorite spot in the garden, “The Beech Tree.” It is strong, simple, ancient, elegant, and quiet; it needs no introduction.
Emily Dickinson and the Little Things
Heading 2
I’ll tell you how the Sun rose
I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –
A Ribbon at a time –
The Steeples swam in Amethyst –
The news, like Squirrels, ran –
The Hills untied their Bonnets –
The Bobolinks – begun –
Then I said softly to myself –
“That must have been the Sun”!
But how he set – I know not –
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while –
Till when they reached the other side –
A Dominie in Gray –
Put gently up the evening Bars –
And led the flock away –
High From The Earth I Heard A Bird
High from the earth I heard a bird;
He trod upon the trees
As he esteemed them trifles,
And then he spied a breeze,
And situated softly
Upon a pile of wind
Which in a perturbation
Nature had left behind.
A joyous-going fellow I gathered from his talk,
Which both of benediction
And badinage partook,
Without apparent burden, I learned, in leafy wood
He was the faithful father
Of a dependent brood;
And this untoward transport His remedy for care,
A contrast to our respites.
How different we are!
Heading 2
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides -
You may have met him? Did you not
His notice instant is -
The Grass divides as with a Comb,
A spotted Shaft is seen,
And then it closes at your Feet
And opens further on -
He likes a Boggy Acre -
A Floor too cool for Corn -
But when a Boy and Barefoot
I more than once at Noon
Have passed I thought a Whip Lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled And was gone -
Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me
I feel for them a transport
Of Cordiality
But never met this Fellow
Attended or alone
Without a tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone.
The Moon was but a Chin of Gold
The Moon was but a Chin of Gold
A Night or two ago—
And now she turns Her perfect Face
Upon the World below—
Her Forehead is of Amplest Blonde—
Her Cheek—a Beryl hewn—
Her Eye unto the Summer Dew
The likest I have known—
Her Lips of Amber never part—
But what must be the smile
Upon Her Friend she could confer
Were such Her Silver Will—
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest Star—
For Certainty She take Her Way
Beside Your Palace Door—
Her Bonnet is the Firmament—
The Universe—Her Shoe—
The Stars—the Trinkets at Her Belt—
Her Dimities—of Blue—