Three point eight for string quartet
”We have only one globe. We need three point eight globes.”
Three point eight is a polarized work about the state of the world.
In 2019 Overshoot day in Finland was at the beginning of April and in 2022 it was at the end of March. If we keep on wasting the natural fonds as we do now, we will need 3,8 globes. For my child the number felt abstract and she asked why don’t we just stop overshooting. The restlessness of a work reflects the transformation of the society combined with friction and the sensibility of a child to see the world. I think that in music through friction one can sense the sensibility more intensively.
Duration appr. 14 minutes
photo: Minna Leinonen
The composition process of this work in 2020 happened at the time when the pandemic changed our perception of the world. The work was to be composed in the middle of the state of emergency and there was not a certainty about performers and finally about the festival. Dropping to a world without music was devastating. Composing this piece without musicians to think about, was like I was creating a skeleton - an empty shell without content. Working has never felt as lonely as in spring 2020, because the performers and the audience are usually the only composers´ work community. In spring 2022, after I got to know the performers, I wanted to revise the work. After that, with the help of the presence of the living musicians, I felt I got some bereft of humanity to the work.
Composing is in a way creating a dialog with the world. Especially in a world crisis the attention becomes attached to the fact of what I really want to say with my music. Sometimes I capture the idea of the work with a poetic expression, when thought, experiences and the picture of a world may be conveyed with flashes, shapes or atmospheres and sometimes I want to interpret the relationship of the music and the world without embellishing it.
Three point eight was commissioned by the Viitasaari Time of Music.
Many thanks to Arts Promotion Centre Finland
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Performances
F.p. Quartetto Maurice:
Georgia Privatera, violin, Laura Bertolino, violin, Francesco Vernero, viola, Aline Privatera, cello