Ghosts of Great Violence

This four-movement string quartet was inspired by my visits to WWI battlefields, particularly the Somme, which I began in 2008. Here I felt that the land itself had absorbed the horrors and suffering that took place in 1916 and, as a result, was imbued with a deep sadness. This work reflects both this experience and certain techniques used by the writer Ford Maddox Ford in his tetralogy of novels Parade’s End, set around World War I. In particular, his use of interior monologue inspired the solos that take place in each of the movements. 

After the introduction to the elegiac first movement, reflective cello solos lead the ensemble through a number of episodes, some of which are completed within the movement while others anticipate movement three. In movement two both the first violin and viola have solos, which take place against a stumbling pizzicato figure inspired by the iconic depiction of blinded soldiers in John Singer Sargent’s WWI painting Gassed. The fast third movement follows the second without a break, and at one point features an anxious, nervous monologue for the second violin while the remainder of the ensemble recede into the background. In the fourth movement, subtitled ‘Spectral Colloquies/Interior Monologues’, the monologue idea dominates: a reflective monologue appears in the first violin before being joined by the viola for an argumentative duet; this duo then makes way for alternating monologues between the cello and second violin which then themselves lead to another duo. The climax of the work is subsequently approached by means of a tutti colloquy which, as it recedes, reveals increasing reference to the opening of movement one. 

I invented the title ‘Ghosts of Great Violence’ to suggest a certain ambiguity: the ghosts I experienced on the battlefields were certainly the result of great violence, but, as was often depicted around the period of World War I, the ghosts themselves felt great anger at what they had been made to suffer.

Ghosts of Great Violence was commissioned by the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama for the Quatuor Danel with funds kindly provided by the Britten-Pears Foundation. The complete four-movement version was premiered on 8 February 2013 in the Memorial Hall at Manchester Grammar School by the Quatuor Danel.

Philip Grange