‘Soggy Chestnuts’ is a quirky piece about an experience I had when eating a packet of Soggy Chestnuts. A string quartet was chosen as the instrumentation of this piece, as strings can play with all kinds of articulations. With strings, I can create very specific sound textures.

 

This piece can be broken into four main sections that are indicated with rehearsal marks, each of which represents a different aspect of the timeline of events. Soggy Chestnuts makes use of multiple articulations including glissandos’, pizzicatos, artificial harmonics, and tremolos to create unique and unsettling textures. The tempo of the piece is a slow 8-BPM. The key of the piece is C major, but non-diatonic notes are frequently used to further develop unsettling textures.

 

The first section (rehearsal mark A) begins with some sweet chords played with homophonic voicing. The section immediately transitions into polyphony, with the use of a blocked-out melody. The majority of the first section uses primarily diatonic notes to make this section easily listenable. Arpeggios are used to establish broken chords and a descending bassline is used to invoke a feeling of nostalgia in the listener.  Section one ends with a big, dynamic, tremolo build-up that abruptly finishes as the next section begins.

 

Section two (rehearsal mark B) establishes a strange, off-putting texture by having all strings play pizzicato with a very off-beat rhythm. I wanted this section to feel intentionally confusing, so both the melody and rhythm are left as unpredictable as possible with what comes next to ‘surprise’ the listener. This section is short and lacks any motivic ideas to further create the idea of ‘confusion’, as the listener cannot attach a melody or clear harmony to what is played here.

 

Section three (rehearsal mark C) begins after an awkwardly long fermata in violin. The cello begins with a constant, droning, low C. The cello continues to play this note with dynamic swells for around eight bars to create a menacing, bassy sound. The low range of the cello is paired with the harsh high register of the violin to create an extreme range between instruments that makes the listener uneasy. Glissandos and chromatic runs are frequently used in this section. This is intentional as I wanted as little tonality as possible and by frequently using glissandos it becomes difficult for the listener to pinpoint specific pitches and harmonies played. The dynamics of all the parts increase between bars 36-38 to gradually increase tension. The section ends with a giant fortissimo tremolo in all of the string parts.

 

Section four (rehearsal mark D) begins with artificial harmonics to create a ‘serene’, or ‘pure’ sound that contradicts the uneasiness of previous articulations used, like glissandos. This section uses primarily diatonic notes in contradiction to the last section, this creates a more resolute feeling. In this section a tonal center of G is formed through the use of F#, and the tonal center is fully established with the use of the IV-V-I chord progression at the end of the piece. This section was made to intentionally sound simple and joyful to make it far more digestible in contrast to other sections of the piece.

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When the first draft of the piece was written, I received multiple points of constructive feedback to improve the piece and its score. The main changes I made based on these changes include:

• Using rehearsal marks to clearly indicate separate sections from one another

• Write the sounding pitch as well when writing artificial harmonics

• Re-use of melodic ideas for listener familiarity and cohesion of sections