Steven Mackey – The Ancestors: ballet in eight tableaux (world premiere)
Wigmore Hall – 3 January 2025, 7.30pm
We eagerly await the world premiere of Steven Mackey’s commission, The Ancestors: ballet in eight tableaux, a quintet for string quartet and electric guitar, and the first in a trilogy of commissions that the Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival has embarked on over the next few years.
Ahead of the concert at the Wigmore Hall (7.30pm on 3 January), we wanted to share with you note about the work, penned by the composer:
The Ancestors: ballet in eight tableux
- The Medium
- Pas de Deux
- Cascade and Groove
- Blues
- Rumination
- Phrygian
- Remembrance
- Consequence (Consequents)
50 years ago , as a teenage rock musician just discovering concert music through encounters with Beethoven’s last string quartet and Ravel’s only quartet, I fantasized composing a piece for electric guitar and string quartet. I had that opportunity in the late 80’s and early 90’s with a trilogy of such pieces (On the Verge, Troubadour Songs, and Physical Property).
The idea of combining electric and acoustic, the iconic rock and roll instrument and the quintessential classical ensemble as well as the concomitant cultural baggage of both, seemed like an obvious step forward to me but it was greeted with skepticism in the beginning. I now regard these works as signature pieces. Physical Property in particular, is like a beloved ancestor, born in another time but continuing to live in me through 100+ performances with dozens of string quartets over the past 35 years. With every performance, every reunion I wonder: what would I do now? What would the descendent of Physical Property sound like?
There is something about the fade-out ending of Physical Property that never actually ends and it was easy to imagine it living on, its essence wafting through the tableaux of this new work until it is quoted in movement 7 – Remembrance. While the end of Physical Property is the only literal quote other there are abstracted references to other ancestors whose DNA make up my current practice from Byrd to Beethoven, Blues, and Zappa.
In my earlier works I cast the guitar as an equal member of the quintet, playing notes and rhythms, contributing to the harmony and counterpoint and participating in conversations on the same plane as the string quartet. I avoided the processing effects that could potentially put the guitar in another acoustic or psychological space.
There is “normal” playing in The Ancestors also but this work frequently explores the processing effects that give the guitar access to those other spaces, echoing the past and freezing the present, diffusing, detuning, and harmonizing, creating ripples, wobbles, and buzzes. The textures that arise from the guitar effects act on the quartet less as harmony and counterpoint and more as backdrops or scrims that change the sense of venue. There is an otherness to these sounds and they imbue the mood with an eerie mystery. Given the explicit conversation with my musical past a I imagined a séance with the guitar cast as the spirit guide or medium accessing other planes for the quartet.
It has been over 20 years since Anthony Marwood and I met playing Physical Property together and that has led to decades of fruitful friendship and collaboration. The Ancestors is dedicated to him.
How To Book
In a characteristically Peasmarsh-y programme that brings a little slice of East Sussex to the Wigmore Hall stage, the Mackey will be framed by Beethoven’s Serenade for String Trio and Dvořák’s piano quintet No. 2, for which Anthony, Richard, Grace and Hélène will be joined by pianist Aleksandar Madžar. For further details about the concert, please visit the page for the concert on the Wigmore Hall’s website.
General booking for this concert is now open. Please visit the Wigmore Hall box office online, in person, or by telephone (020 7935 2141) to book tickets. A £4 administration fee (per transaction, not per seat) will apply over the phone and online but not in person.
We look forward to sharing details of our second and third commissions when we can. Watch this space!