Metamorphoses for String Quartet
John G. Parton
Assembled in 2000, the quartet consists of a series of variations, some slicing-and-dicing the melody in serial fashions, some playing with the harmonic sequence (including one variation in which the entire theme, melody & harmony, is inverted; imagine my glee to discover that it worked!), and some in which the harmony is dictated by the notes of a segment of melody, a device I explored further in my third piano sonata. These variations were written in no concerted order in fits and spurts over the previous four years, and then were gathered into a scheme in which faster variations which tend to be developed by more "modern" means were grouped and separated by slower variations or groups thereof generally more recognizably related to the original theme harmonically. The complimentary fugue was then appended; the theme thereof is subjected similar variant treatments, and is finally presented simultaneously against the original theme to close the work.
I'm rather proud of this quartet.