Quartets I. V. VI. (1976)

This work is entitled Quartets because at any given time only four instruments play simultaneously. Other versions (of the complete set of Quartets I-VIII) were made for 24, 41, and 93 instruments. These quartets are derived (via subtractive method) from existing compositions: I. Lift up your heads, o ye Gates (Jacob French); V. Heath (William Billings.); VI. Judea (W.B.). The concert band is separated into four subgroups, each representing one of the four voices in the original scores. The text consists of vowels derived from the text of the corresponding tones in the original compositions. The work was composed on a commission from the University of Wisconsin in River Falls.