"Lead Tongue" by Alex Barsom, performed by Orange Road Quar

"Lead Tongue" This string quartet ruminates on the faint babbling of just two notes. Through four attacca movements, the murmur expands into undefined, haphazard runs in the first movement, constricts inwards on itself with microtonal inflections until it reaches a fiery unison in the second movement, stagnates in isolation with an icy, static harmonic backdrop in the third movement, and in the fourth movement finally returns nearly to its original form, colored now with more chatter as the entire ensemble at once plays slight variants of this gesture with occasional outbursts. As this murmur struggles to speak, articulate, clarify, and elaborate, it searches for additional insight, new meaning and understanding by its final iteration. Eventually, it fades away like a question rather than a conclusion. This murmur and its labored attempts to unfurl reflect the frustrating inadequacy of language to fully convey subjective experience. I often feel like I struggle to impart the image, feeling or story I have in my head to others, and I worry about shattering relationships by expressing something that holds inherent tension. So, I either hesitate or entirely repress attempts to express myself, anxious about its futility if I’m not understood and maybe even its repercussions if I am understood too well. However, what drew me to write this piece—which is also a large part of my love for music in general— is that it can sidestep this unfeasible communicative demand while actually benefitting from poetic ambiguity. Though I could never in any piece of music untangle this maze, I will simply explore and accept its limitations, while working to not be so limited by them. --AB
Tribeca New Music - The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, NYC, Nov. 5, 2025.