music we'd like to hear in september

Tim Parkinson: When did you write it?

Matteo Fargion: I started writing in April last year, at the beginning of the first lockdown. Everything was getting cancelled and I realised that I was going to be home for the foreseeable future, suddenly without a reasonable excuse for not composing.

TP: How did you write it?

MF: I was very disciplined: I got up at 6am each morning and wrote for a couple of hours, until the dog needed a walk. I wrote linearly, à la Feldman, without looking back and without grand structural plans. And if I was finished with a material I would leave it there and not attempt to go on to the next in the same sitting. That way I could start anew and free each day, which made me look forward to it. I had no expectations, no big ideas. It was a kind of therapy, and I remember feeling a bit lost without it when I finished in September. The only editing I did at the end was to throw away things that didn’t make sense any more, or that jolted the continuity too much. And, by the way, the reason there is so much pizzicato in the piece is that I was working in Finale and they are the only decent samples...

TP: Why did you decide to write a string quartet?

MF: Oh I’m very indecisive and I didn’t want to get stuck at the first hurdle by having to come up with an ‘interesting’ instrumentation. I’m so used to writing on demand. Solo piano pieces are too difficult and the only other obvious option was an orchestral piece, which seemed far too ambitious.

TP: Why is it called the nobby saddy quartet?

MF: When my daughter Francesca was 4 or 5 she asked me why my music was so ‘nobby saddy’ (or was it ‘knobby saddy’?) I still have no idea what she meant but maybe she was referring to my propensity for the bitter sweet or melancholic! And when I told Jonathan (Burrows, my long standing collaborator) this became a house joke, and I have been banned from writing anything with that flavour ever since! It occurred to me, in this instance, that I could write what I pleased and there was no need to censor anything that came up, including the slightly embarrassing title.

TP: Did you say that the beginning image comes from The Quiet Dance? [a dance duet made with Jonathan Burrows in 2004]

MF: Oh yes I had forgotten that. Jonathan and I had been discussing the possibility of making a music piece by translating The Quiet Dance, in which we endlessly walk up and down a diagonal, 8 steps at time, with the body gradually crumpling on each repetition, to imitate a falling musical scale. In the end I used the Dies Irae tune for Science Fiction (as that performance is now called), and we each play a synthesiser and some drums. But I returned to the idea of the falling scale for the string quartet, and it got me started at least.

TP: Is this the longest piece you have written?

MF: It’s by far the longest piece of instrumental music, yes. I’ve recently written two operas which are even longer though. But I didn’t intend it to be so long, I just kept going until I really couldn’t think of what could possibly happen next. Then I got embarrassed that it was such a beast and toyed with the idea of suggesting to anyone interested in playing it that they could stop whenever they liked!

TP: If it was a film, what film would it be?

MF: Oh I don’t know. A gently plodding, episodic film, maybe black and white, a bit sentimental, with no plot, no conflict or drama or resolution, not too demanding and not too challenging. Maybe Italian? Any thoughts?

TP: What are you doing now?

MF: On the road again a bit as things start to open up: The premiere of a new opera called Bad Dante Bad English Bad Opera (part 1) made with Andrea Spreafico is coming up in Trondheim. And Jonathan and I have a few performances of Science Fiction and other pieces lined up. Sadly no more free time at home to write nobby saddy music just for fun...