Sundial, scored for string quartet and percussion, engages with the tradition of works for string quartet ‘plus one’—works like W.A. Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, Franz Schubert’s Cello Quintet D956, not to mention the numerous piano quintets.

Like much of my recent music, this work explores ideas of resonance and brightness. I treat the five voices a little bit like a sustain pedal on a piano. In many passages, the strings elongate the percussion sounds and vice versa, so much so that the instruments on stage might sound like one polyphonic organism arranged not in a hierarchy but in a symbiotic web in which the roles of the instruments are balanced and consistently in flux.

The form possesses a shape similar to its namesake: the five musicians project a series of musical shadows that, unbroken, reveal the passage of time in the shape of an inverted arc. The work is made of two distinct types of music: rocking music—fast, pulsing dual harmonies that sway back and forth—and cyclic music—slightly off-kilter contrapuntal figurations that blossom over long stretches of time. Only in the final minutes of the work does the music break out of these two types of material, ascending to a ringing, intensely bright conclusion.

Although the piece is not explicitly autobiographical, I wrote it during a period that saw a number of immense personal changes, not the least of which was the birth of my first child. The almost blinding joy of having him around has been a counterbalance to the bizarre, shadowy last two years. To me, this duality is the essence of the piece: it is at once a rippling shadow and a meridian sun.

© Samuel Adams