Between 1915 and 1917 Debussy concentrated his creative energies on Les Sonates Cycliques. During this time he completed the Sonata for Cello and Piano, the Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, and the Sonata for Violin and Piano. His original conception for the cycle included six ‘sonatas’. The fourth sonata was to be for oboe, horn, and harpsichord, the fifth for trumpet, clarinet, bassoon and piano, and the sixth was to “combine all those instruments used in the previous five.” Although he did not live to complete the entire cycle of sonatas their conceptual influence and experimentalism continues to inform contemporary developments and the form and content foreshadow many of the concepts found in late 20 th and early 21 st century music.

Marianne Wheeldon wrote: “the sonatas resemble the etudes in that they reveal the composer’s preoccupation with the historical affiliations of his works.” (Debussy’s Late Style, 81). Historical affiliation has been central to the development of plucked stringed instruments and its influence on the form and content of the music: from the earliest intabulations and diferencias of Narvaez to the post-modern appropriation and in Music of Memory by Nicholas Maw. Debussy’s spectral presence helped to usher in the modern era for the guitar when Manuel de Falla’s quoted “Soireée dans grenade” in the Homenaje pour “Le tombeau de Claude Debussy”, which is, by most accounts, one of the first “modern” guitar compositions: a guitarist’s Rite of Spring.

For most of my career I have focused my creative energies on composing for the guitar in all of its incarnations: nylon, steel, electric, and slide, as well as many of its closest and distant relatives: mandolin, ukulele, banjo, and balalaika. For me the guitar is a concept that is in a constant state of progress and becoming. Unlike so many other instruments there is no fixed set number of strings, frets, body design, tuning, or method of articulation that defines it. It is the composer, through the completion of each new piece, who brings the conceptualization of the instrument into greater clarity. Likewise, every guitarist-performer must ‘choreograph’ the music to suit their individual instrument(s).

For the past few years I have devoted myself to completing a comprehensive chamber series consisting of four duos, including one standard stringed instrument and the guitar: Symphonia Concertante (violin & guitar); A Repeal of Reticence (viola & guitar); Sonantics (cello & guitar); Four Aspects of Emancipation (bass & guitar). Taking my influence from Debussy, this is designed to culminate in a quintet—Quincunx—that includes all the instruments. Quincunx uses the image of the pattern for five found on a pair of dice to (re)position the guitar as the center point of a chamber music tradition and demonstrate how the instrument is uniquely fitted to the expressive language of 21st century music.

Sample pages are available below. Please contact Thomas Schuttenhelm for full versions.

Stay tuned for Quincunx’s release
on Frameworks Records this Fall.

Featuring Jiji, Gabriele Leite, Trevor Babb, Jordan Dodson on guitars, Danbi Um (violin),
Nick Revel (viola), Tom Kraines (cello), and Robert Black (bass). Produced by Dave Veslocki.