Label: Unseen Worlds

米カリフォルニア出身、作曲を学んだ後ヨーロッパに渡りシュトックハウゼン、ペンデレツキ、ゴットフリート・ミヒャエル・ケーニヒに師事、独自の理屈による電子音パルスミュージックを生み出したJohn McGuire。本作[Double String Trios]は、タイトル通りその手法をストリングスに落とし込んだ、2つの弦楽三重奏の為の3曲を収録した2026年アルバム。2009年から2019年にかけて作曲、シンセサイザー録音に比べより複雑になった印象があり、演奏家自身が生み出す豊かさと不完全さが入り混じる絶妙なバランスの内容となっています。





Double String Trios presents three major works for two string trios, composed by John McGuire between 2009 and 2019 and conducted by Axel Lindner. This release began with Walter Zimmermann asking Bernd Härpfer of Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln – GIMIK e.V. to arrange a concert premiere in celebration of McGuire’s 80th birthday.

McGuire’s musical roots lie in the electronic studios of postwar Cologne, shaped through studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Krzysztof Penderecki, and grounded in the traditions of European serialism. Working with synthesizers capable of generating up to 1,800 pulses per second, he developed a beautifully harmonious, crystalline music shaped by the ear into a world of flowing continuities between one point and the next.

Transferred to stringed instruments, that world becomes infinitely more complex — suffused with the richness and impurities of human players and their acoustic technologies. Conceived as two facing string trios in antiphonal dialogue, the music links studio spatial thinking with older split-ensemble traditions, unfolding through Fibonacci proportions, rotating tempi, shifting meters, and continual harmonic transposition.