Ben and Arditti

This has been a big week for me. The Arditti Quartet has been in
residency all week. They recorded my piece on Wednesday. They are
amazing players, members of a celebrated, elite group, representatives
of the highest echelons of new music and they were ornery, critical
and demanding (at least in the recording sessions). I was intimidated
at first seeing the way that they took a few of my colleagues out
behind the shed for the way they had written their pieces but by the
time my turn came I knew that I would be ok. I had prepared carefully
and I knew that I had written well for the instruments. And I stood
my ground. Despite the best efforts of Irvine Arditti (the first
violin, leader and founder) to catch me in an egregious error, I
escaped with precious little that he could complain of. At one point
he thought he had me and asked (with a slightly nasally London
accent), "why do you write eighth notes here?" When I calmly
explained why I wrote eighth notes there he said shortly, "fair enough
… going on then…" Later in the session when a similar passage
returned he exclaimed with delight, "now I've got you!" holding up his
violin (which was worth at least $300,000 as we discovered in a
particularly unpleasant exchange from the day before) as if it were a
bow and pointed his violin bow at me as if it were an arrow. I had
slightly displaced the dynamic markings in this passage making the
eighth notes somewhat irrelevant … a truly minor point but he had
caught me in a mistake. By this time we had made it though so much of
the piece that I knew (thought) that he was (mostly) joking. In the
end I got a great recording of a piece that, at least today, I feel
pretty good about and that will look really good in a portfolio and on
my curriculum vitae.

There was something of a competition involved in the residency in
that one of the pieces was selected for inclusion in the public
concert that the quartet gave on Friday. My piece was not chosen but
Roger had the following to say about it in an email: "Dear Ben, The
quartet's decision was not an easy one. Yours was one of the small
number that they seriously considered for inclusion on their program.
It was/is an impressively clear and "musical" work (as they all said).
We'll talk more soon, of course, but you have reason for great
satisfaction. R Reynolds" Incidentally, the piece that was chosen was
one that the quartet spent no less than a half an hour reaming the
composer for. At one point they even had everyone gather round the
music so that they could point out all the near-fatal faults in it
leaving the poor guy to smolder afterward.