Nicole Lizée

Nicole Lizée

The Criterion Collection for string quartet

(2018)

for amplified string quartet, duct tape, parchment paper, vocals, electronics and video

Hitchcock Études

-Schoolhouse

-Doris

Kubrick Études

-Big Wheel

-HAL’s Requiem

-redruM

David Lynch Étude

-Tombeau de Leland

Tarantino Étude

-Tape Music/Clapping Music

Make-out Music

Behind the Sound of Music

By Susanna Eastburn, MBE

“These Hitchcock Etudes, and three of her subsequent works, Tarantino Etudes, Kubrick Etudes, and David Lynch Etudes form a body of work which Lizée has referred to as the Criterion Collection. They are inspired by auteur theory (the idea of a film director as the ultimate creative “author” of a film), and self-evidently born out of her admiration for these directors; specifically by her repeated watching and rewatching of taped recordings of these films.

The Criterion Collection comprises “études” or studies, in line with a long tradition that includes the celebrated études of Chopin, Debussy, Liszt and, in the 20th century, Ligeti and Cage – to name just a few. Etudes were originally conceived as teaching material to develop virtuoso technique, with each étude honing in on a particular technical challenge.

Lizée’s four sets of Etudes understand and are playing with this tradition – not only in the superficial aspect of their demands on the instrumentalist(s), but in their obsessive revisiting and re-exploring of fragments of the film and film score source material. And what happens when a cassette recording of a film, or part of a film, is watched over and over again? It degrades, it bleeds, it slurs and slides. All of this, and more, is in each of these works.”

These works were arranged for string quartet by Nicole Lizée for Friction Quartet