Music of Innocence & Experience

ensemble string quartet
written summer 2024
duration 9-10 minutes

Dedicated to the Attacca Quartet, whose omnivorous enthusiasm for music was as infectious as it was inspiring

Loosely inspired by William Blake’s parallel poetry collections Songs of Innocence & Experience, this piece is structured in two halves that correspond roughly to the titular themes. Blake completed Songs of Experience six years after Songs of Innocence, and he originally intended the sets to correspond respectively to adulthood and youth. By the time he finished the collections, however, neither half was purely innocent nor experienced: the two contained poems of the same subject matter, the same titles, and in some cases, the same content. Blake actually moved some of the poems in Innocence to Experience upon completion, suggesting a complex relationship between the halves.

As I began work on the piece, I reflected on the soundworld I had developed over the six years or so since I started composing: a music of rushing motion, extended techniques, and mischievous self-awareness. This style stood in stark contrast to the first few pieces I had written: pop-like chord progressions, simple melodies, emotional transparency to the point of embarrassment. I decided I would try to set these old, ‘naive’ ideas in conversation with my current musical language.

Just as Blake interpolated youth and adulthood into a richly multifaceted work, I hope that by juxtaposing and interweaving these musics that I can cast some doubt upon the linear narratives of growth we often feed ourselves. Sometimes, one must double back to go forward - and other times, forward may not exist at all.

Special thanks must be given to professor Steve Mackey and the Attacca Quartet, whose generosity and open-minded approach to music inspired me to reexamine ideas I had previously dismissed.