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- Sarah Kirkland Snider
Drink the Wild Ayre (for string quartet) (2022)
- G Schirmer Inc (World)
Commissioned for the Emerson String Quartet by Music Accord (www.musicaccord.org)
Programme Note
Composer note
Drink the Wild Ayre is my second string quartet. I wrote my first over twenty years ago while poring over recordings by the Emerson String Quartet. At that time, I was new to composition and bought every CD of theirs I could find, obsessively studying counterpoint and voice-leading via their recordings. Their performances became my benchmark for the masterpieces they recorded; their sounds became synonymous, in my mind, with the composer’s intent. For me, theirs was the definitive interpretation of all the great string quartets in history.
So, when the invitation to write this piece came in — the Emerson’s final commission, to be performed during this, their final season — I nearly fell off my chair. I am still awestruck and humbled to have written this piece for some of my earliest heroes.
The title is a playful nod to one of the most famous quotes by their transcendentalist namesake essayist/philosopher/poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity.” An ayre is a song-like, lyrical piece. The title seemed an apt reference not only to the lilting, asymmetrical rhythms of the music’s melodic narrative but also to the questing spirit, sense of adventure, and full-hearted passion with which the Emerson has thrown itself into everything it has done for the past 47 years. Here’s to the singular magic of these artistic giants and the new adventures that await them.
— Sarah Kirkland Snider
Media
Reviews
Quietly exuberant, Drink the Wild Ayre gave Paul Watkins an eloquent solo opportunity over long-held notes and pizzicato violins. Its lilting, asymmetrical rhythms convincingly represent what Snider describes as “the questing spirit, sense of adventure, and full-hearted passion with which the Emerson has thrown itself into everything it has done for the past 47 years.”
The title mixes a quote by their namesake, philosopher/poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (“Drink the wild air’s salubrity”) with the lyrical nature of a musical “ayre.” The quartet’s committed performance of the Princeton, NJ native’s colorful one-movement work exuded all the carefree, outdoorsy exuberance she could have wanted.
Snider is a contemporary American composer who has been widely performed in the United States and abroad. The title of her quartet is a modified quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Emerson String Quartet’s namesake — “Drink the wild air’s salubrity.” The music nods overtly to nature with its twitters and echoes, though its progress is asymmetrical and often agitated. The Emerson String Quartet gave this new composition an elegant and committed performance.
It instantly brought to mind a bucolic scene of nature and forest, evoking sounds of birds. The title of the work refers to a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, / Drink the wild air’s salubrity.” Snider’s “Ayre” embraces the clear melodic lines of instrumental airs from the 17th century… Compositionally, the work was the simplest on this program of 20th-century classics — but concert music does not need to be complicated or thorny to be a success, which this clearly was.
