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Christopher Cerrone

How to Breathe Underwater

version for string quartet and electronics

(2016)
Duration4'
CommissionHow to Breathe Underwater was commissioned and premièred by Loadbang. This version for string quartet was commissioned by the Argus Quartet.
PremiereFebruary 17, 2017; Sprague Hall at Yale University, New Haven, CT; Argus Quartet
Instrumentation2 violins, viola, cello
Technical requirementsA MAC or PC laptop computer equipped with any multi-channel digital audio workstation (eg: Logic, ProTools, Digital Performer, Max/MSP, Ableton Live, etc) for audio playback
Audio interface (e.g. motu 828, apogee duet, etc)
Stereo speakers
High quality microphones to amplify quartet (optional)
Headphones for one player to follow click track (optional if using Max/MSP)
PublisherPSNY

Media

Program Note

How to Breathe Underwater is a portrait of depression. In the same way that Schumann wrote miniatures based on the literary figures in Carnaval, How to Breathe Underwater was inspired by a character in the Jonathan Franzen novel, Freedom. While reading the novel, I was struck by the character named Connie Monaghan. The author described her as having “no notion of wholeness—[she] was all depth and no breadth. When she was coloring, she got lost in saturating one or two areas with a felt-tip pen." This kind of singular obsessiveness, and the sense of being overwhelmed and eventually drowned by it, inspired me to compose this piece. In fact, I initially called the piece “All Depth and No Breadth.”

However, I decided that "How to Breathe Underwater" was a more appropriate title. In the end, I wanted to suggest optimism, not fatalism.

- Christopher Cerrone

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