Hallelujah! for String Quartet This work is a grand collage of a great multitude of American folk songs about topics ranging from the hobo life (“We Are Three Bums”) to the workers' struggle (“If I Die a Railroad Man”) to unionizing (“A.R.U.”). The opening 'cello solo of “Hallelujah I'm a Bum” and the final viola song of “Lincoln and Liberty” make explicit the mutation from the sufferings of economic turmoil to the hope brought by new leaders and an improvement to the “system.” The quartet plays only harmonics, and the tunes have been transposed to a range in which they make the greatest use of natural harmonics. Two staves are given for each player, the first for the sounding pitch and the second indicating the method of producing it. On this second staff nodes are notated as traditional diamond noteheads, the open strings of which to play are notated at open noteheads and any stopped pitches are notated with filled in noteheads. This is not the case in the opening and closing solos, which are notated in a more traditional, metered, manner, and still indicating the fundamental, the node and the sounding pitch. In the main body of the piece (that is, not the encircling solos) performers should sustain until the next note they are to play, and should be careful, in the case of natural harmonics, to allow that string to keep vibrating. The score remains perpetually quiet, though the closing viola solo may be noticable louder than the rest of the work.
Hallelujah!
Jacob Mashak
for String Quartet
Very Slow and Very Quiet
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
2
5
3
9
1 Minute per Measure, Still Very Quiet
4
11
13
5
6
15
7
17
8
19
9
21
10
23
11
25
12
27
29
13
14
31
33
15
16
35
37
17
18
39
41
19
20
43
45
21
22
47
49
23
24
51
53
25
26
55
57
27
28
59
61
29
30
63
65
31
32
67
69
33
34
Very Slow, Not Quite So Quiet
35
76
36
80