Sans ralentir for string quartet

Includes recorded audio files in WAV and MP3 formats, 9:00 in length.As a student of Composition, I will start by reminding the reader that one of the most problematic situations that composers of today face is not strictly related to music itself. Instead, it has to do with the relationship between them and the general public. Unlike other times of the last five centuries, we live in a time when a large gap exists between the music written today and the taste of the general public. Because of this, is not unusual nowadays to see small audiences enjoying performances of new works. The taste of the public is still very attached to the musical expression of the nineteenth century, and pieces that have been written eighty years ago are announced and performed by the most important orchestras almost as new pieces. This situation is unique in music history. For that reason, it became the starting point for the concept of the current project.\ud The best way I have found to contribute to solving the above-mentioned problem is by writing original music in a contemporary language, and then making a measured use of fragments from a different music, something from the past, which appears throughout the piece in the way of flashbacks. The fragments chosen for this task (which, by the way, have not suffered important alterations or developments) are part of the String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10, by Claude Debussy. The reasons for choosing this composer and not another are based on my belief that Debussy was the first true twentieth-century composer, particularly for the way he thought about music (besides the innovations that are easily recognizable as his). However, I am conscious that Debussy is another composer considered as almost contemporary by many people, thus ignoring in some way the hundred years of musical evolution that separate his music from the contemporary.\ud During the piece, the listener will be exposed to two different musical worlds. One of these, which belongs to the past, will be felt as a well known territory, a place where he feels secure. However, most of the time he will be immersed in a different music, where the employed language is very different and so is its construction. The listener may experience there a feeling of estrangement. \ud The original music I wrote has undeniable roots in Debussy's music, however, the conceptual objective of the piece is to push the listener, whose experience has probably kept him apart from contemporary languages, to wonder about the obvious distance in evolution that exists between the different kinds of music used in the piece. \ud The medium chosen for the piece is not arbitrary since the string quartet may be the most traditional ensemble in chamber music and for that, it seems to be a good tool to show the evolution of music.\ud In order to explain in a clearer way the main idea that governs the piece, I would like to situate the reader in an imaginary place, maybe a room, where some action is taking place. Let us call that imaginary space A. At the same time, we have next to A another imaginary space, another room, with characteristics different from the first, which we will call B. Finally, I would like the reader to imagine himself opening the door that connects the two rooms in order to see just for an instant the action of the other room. It is important to recall here that the more different the action of A and B are, the longer the subject will need to observe in order to get a clear picture of the foreign action. (See more in text.