One of the compositional goals I set myself with this Nocturne was to translate basic electronic music processes into music for acoustic instruments. So the playing techniques and musical ideas often emulate the familiar electric guitar effects of delay (echo), filtering, looping and flanging. A particular focus was the idea of digital delay (not used electronically in the piece, but emulated entirely acoustically by the players!) used as a means of generating a variety of cross-rhythms. Different groups of instruments (or sometimes one instrument within its own part) are called upon to play at different pulse speeds simultaneously--in some cases there are effectively four different meters running at the same time.
The music is essentially monolithic (and often quite simplistic) in nature, and is concerned primarily with harmony, rhythm and timbre. A variety of playing techniques is employed, some of which are standard, others less so. For example, extensive use is made of tone colour transformations to simulate a filter or tone-control. The players achieve this by gradually varying the plucking location along the length of the string. They are also called upon to play with a range of additional techniques including tambora (a combination of "drumming"; and string resonance), pizzicato (muting the struck while plucking it), harmonics, and even bowing the guitar with a cello bow!
The work's title conjoins the idea of a "night" piece (more restless than restful) with a programmatic aspect which is so obvious it hardly needs mentioning--only to say that I was writing the piece two ideas became associated in my mind: the strong reaction I had to seeing the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the childrens' nursery rhyme that seemed to grow organically out of the music I was writing and which is quoted in full towards the end of the piece.
The piece is dedicated to my good friend Laurence Crane, great composer and bona fide dude.
Nocturne (Global Warnings) for guitar quartet duration: 12:00'
