Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Holly Harrison
Balderdash (2018)
- Wise Music G. Schirmer Australia Pty Ltd (World)
Programme Note
Balderdash begins and ends with amplifier feedback: a sound that quickly makes us bring our fingers to our ears! The piece imagines an alternate world in which music is heard between the feedback - a sort of sub/hyper-sonic sound world which takes place in mere seconds.
With this in mind, the string quartet explores musical ideas inspired by electric guitar, including distortion, white noise, whammy bars, power-chords, dive-bombs, wah-wah, phaser effects, slap bass, and of course, speaker feedback. Balderdash makes high use of punk rock rhythms, dissonance, and percussive-based jams, which morph in and out of bluegrass, grunge, prog-rock, metal, and . . . disco.
Given the piece was commissioned for a competition, I felt it might be fun to experiment with a battle-of-the-bands theme within the string quartet itself. Throughout Balderdash, players go rogue (especially the cello!), engage in one-upmanship, jam, duel, challenge, compete, interrupt, surrender, work together in teams, and cooperate as one. The piece is intended to be theatrical and encourages the quartet to perform with abandon.
Media
Scores
Reviews
Balderdash, the Holly Harrison work, was of particular fascination to your humble correspondent because it presented the opportunity for quartets to move outside their comfort zones, and really innovate in an alternative soundscape to the norm for string quartets with fascinating outcomes. Indeed, Silo Collective co-ordinator Leta Keens, whose members funded the commission, had the following to say at the event: ‘We’ve now heard Balderdash eight times, and it’s still a revelation every time and will be, I’m sure, every time it’s played from now on.'
Holly Harrison’s Balderdash was exactly as intended, a lot of mad fun in the Lewis Carroll sense (from whose literature she draws inspiration), embracing musical absurdities in a digestible way. Germany’s Goldmund Quartett even removed their jackets and went black T-shirts to the amusement of the crowd…