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Lydian String Quartet and David Krakauer Premiere Vijay Iyer's Disunities

Mar. 10, 2022

The Lydian String Quartet and polymathic clarinetist David Krakauer give the world premiere performance of Vijay Iyer's Disunities on March 19 at Brandeis University.

The composer notes:

"I kept restarting this piece over the course of a couple of years, while it was subject to a series of pandemic-era postponements. None of my ideas felt right for these times of precarity, suffering, conflict, and shattering confusion. It was, quite frankly, difficult to determine this work’s reason for being. 

Finally, in a notebook last summer I wrote, “I thought about disunities and about managed parallel synchronies — say, pairwise coordinations in rhythm, while there might also be a relationship in the material between different subgroups. So what may seem like factions turns out to be entangled, or vice versa. Maybe it’s about portraying unities devolving into factions. It feels like the right move right now.” I pursued a strategy of “pairing off”/“teaming up” within the quintet — five apart, one against four, two against three, and so forth. This simple, almost banal iterative method somehow offered a rush of clarity, a newfound sense of what it is that a group of people can do together — hope, in a word.

I’m very grateful to David Krakauer and the Lydian Quartet for inviting me into their world, and for giving this piece the life that it needs."


Disunities was commissioned by the Lydian String Quartet and generously funded by a gift from Anonymous donors.

Listen to Vijay Iyer's Mozart Effects (2011):

(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Quartet, K. 417d [unfinished fragment]
-- attacca to: Vijay Iyer: Mozart Effects/Parker Quartet)


To learn more about Vijay Iyer, visit: schott-music.com.


Vijay Iyer
Disunities (2021)
for clarinet and string quartet
18'

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