Quartet for the End of Music

for Bass Clarinet, Cello, Tuba, and Percussion

In this eerie, ritualistic work, four performers play, chant, shout, and unravel the very idea of music.

Excerpt (live recording):

Complete piece (live recording):

Duration: 7 minutes
Difficulty: Advanced. Suitable for conservatory students, advanced community ensembles, and professionals.

Written for Jeffrey Meyer, tuba

Winner of a Harvey Phillips Award for Composition Excellence from the International Tuba-Euphonium Association (2006)

The piece opens with the performers speaking the preface to Olivier Messiaen's celebrated Quartet for the End of Time, but with one key word altered. From there, the piece unfolds as a single, continuous movement for a unique ensemble of bass clarinet, cello, tuba, and percussion—an intentionally dark sonority that grounds the music in a shadowed world. The instrumental writing is virtuosic and highly energized, yet the emotional landscape remains ambiguous, suspended between intensity and irony.

The performers move beyond traditional playing, incorporating vocalizations, speech, and stylized physical gestures into a ritualistic theatrical experience. The word “music” itself is fragmented into syllables, phonemes, and raw sound, as if being examined, dismantled, and reassembled in real time. The result is a piece that balances on a knife's edge between seriousness and absurdity, perhaps blurring into dark comedy.

Premiere: 4/4/04 – Rochester, New York
Juliet Grabowski, bass clarinet • Patti Garvey, cello • Jeffrey Meyer, tuba • Sean Connors, percussion • Chappell Kingsland, conductor

The percussionist plays Marimba (5-octave preferred) and Concert Bass Drum.

Score Preview