Hymn of Change (2012)
Hymn of Change from Bell Solaris arranged for string quartet by Andrew Tholl on Cold Blue Two anthology; Cold Blue Music, #CB0036, Los Angeles, 2012, [CD]
In my 1998 work for piano, Bell Solaris—the Sun rings like a bell, initiating waves of influence that traverse, shape, and create space, time, and life—twelve movements emerged from subtle and grand transformations of the Hymn of Change, which I had written earlier in 1992. Some years later, after hearing Bell, Andrew Tholl was inspired in 2008 to arrange the Hymn, a kind of slow, gospel waltz, for string quartet. The Bell Solaris score includes imbedded texts as part of the communication with performers. In Hymn of Change they come from Pythagorus's lectures on change, as reported by Ovid. "The phrase 'being born' is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while 'dying' means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sum of things remains unchanged." (Metamorphoses, trans. Mary M. Innes, Penguin Books, London, 1955) The Formalist Quartet recorded this arrangement in 2010. The performers were: violin Andrew Tholl, violin Mark Menzies, viola Andrew McIntosh and cello Ashley Walters.