Anájikon, the Angel in the Blue Garden

String quartet no. 3

op. 61, 2015

I. The Blue Rose 
II. The Blue Bird 
III. The Blue Moon, a. the bright side, b. turning, c. the dark side 

For string quartet
Duration: 18 min.

World premiere: 12 November 2015, Kasseler Musiktage. Minguet Quartett

Album by ECM: Konstantia Gourzi/Anájikon
Edition: Universal Edition

Composer’s notes

Anájikon, the Angel in the Blue Garden is my third string quartet. It is part of a series of compositions dedicated to angels. Anájikon is the first composition in this series. Each composition in the series is composed for a different instrumentation.

Angels created as paintings or sculptures by artist friends inspired me to start this series of compositions in 2015. The music does not interpret the artwork but is close to it in terms of sound and creates a spiritual connection between the sculpture or painting and the music. Colour, form and sound are inseparable for me. Writing a composition with this “common world” in the background is for me a challenge and a gift.

The sculpture associated with the composition Anájikon, the Angel in the Blue Garden belongs to a series of sculptures by the Berlin artist Alexander Polzin that have a close association with angels.

The title Anájikon is self-invented, created through combinations of names and numbers and does not mean something existing. Each angel in this series stands in a specific-coloured garden. The garden in Anájikon corresponds to the limited space in which a contemplation of nature and a description of elements such as a rose, a bird, the moon with its light and dark side take place, as if we could observe everything up close without distance.

Everything that exists in this garden is blue. For me, the colour blue plays a strong spiritual role of its own, and the concept and dramaturgy of the piece is also based on this energy.

Anájikon, the Angel in the Blue Garden, consists of three movements, of which the third movement unfolds in three parts.

The first movement, The Blue Rose, begins with a theme led by the violin. In the middle of the movement, a new theme appears, which is taken over by all four voices in succession, as if the musical element is seeking a way to unite. The movement closes with a return to the beginning in a similar form.

In the second movement, The Blue Bird, the leading instrument is the viola, which leads the other three instruments in a musical conversation from the very beginning. On the one hand, the elements are fully composed, but the four musicians are also given the opportunity to shape the movement themselves, to interact freely with each other and to improvise with time and possible combinations of themes. For this reason, this movement sounds new every time.

The third movement, The Blue Moon, consists of three parts: the light side of the moon, the turning, the dark side of the moon. New timbres that did not appear in the first two movements appear here, developing and changing as if different viepoints were acoustically visible. The end of the movement – and the piece – sounds like a unison with four different playing styles, as if a tonal unification has taken place and as if there is a new beginning in the last bars.