String Quartet No.1

Alongside the symphony, the concert music form what holds itself in awe for most composers since Mozart is the string quartet. At the same time, even more than the symphony, the string quartet is a profound musical expression, quite unsuited for verbal description. The subtle blend of related textures that comprises the sound of two violins, viola and 'cello (incidently completely beyond the tweeky-twonky midi at the present time) leaves the musical verbalist, the analyst, the professional 'appreciator', left with nothing to say but pale similes that would have the Mona Lisa summarised as: face of some tart looking a bit miserable in brown.

If you were to analyse my first string quartet, you'd come up with two forms, acting as one. First, an episodic, pseudo-ritornello (which is just Italian for episodic), returning to a repeated phrase, a kind of pulsating cadence employing harmonics. Second, though, the form is organic, what Liszt might call metamorphose; and this is emphasised by the gentle yet considerable acceleration that takes place throughout the quartet's single movement. This acceleration, though, is natural, an inertial momentum, not to build tension, nor as relentless Wagnerian dribble; more as a nurtural law, a gentle temporal gravity, the incremental growth of a life. Beyond this general map-bearing, the calibration of due north, there is little I can describe in words in this music. It is a logical argument; a mathematical argument, a good one I hope since I took pains in grounding my premises, and carefully resolved that x=x at the end. Yet, you cannot decipher the strings of logic just by taking a calculator to the score; this is no integrally serial piece of logarithmic noise. The maths is musical, a generality of spheres; and as musical maths it tries to make sense in the hearing; a spark to imagination in numeralogical prose. This maths is eclectic, and driven not by principles of algebra or commutation, but by inspiration, the purity of a dream. And like a dream, I cannot remember much of the thematic development as it took place in my head, only that I woke from constructing the work after several weeks contented that I could make sense of what i'd expressed, and could express, at least in ear-form, the equation of emotive art.

Art/Science, or Art/Maths. We see both as a polarity, a tale of two fields split by a topographic parallel called 'precision' or 'experiment'. That even the most outlandish creative artists employ both precision and often experiment, does not deter the legions of art-haters in their quest for perfectly installed hi-fi shelves so they can listen to 20 Summer Greats free with the Daily Mail. You take the high road, they tell me; you take the spliff and the action-painting; while i'll stick to my systems analysis and my Halfords and my mobile 'phone that plays dvds while scanning every available on-line dating agency for a shag. I know, i'm free associating, but the point i'm trying to make is so socio-historically big that I need to sidle up to it to avoid being eaten by my own cerebellum. Here we go: way back when the only scientists were a bunch of long-dead and forgotten Athenian piss-heads, much art as was tolerated was spiritual, metaphysical, visionary or all three. This was fine, and all the popes had very pretty walls, and the odd weirdo like the younger Gallileo could not compete with the surety of the heavens. Then rationalism came along. Bacon reconvened the trinity of experiment, observation and hypothesis; then Newton and Kepler began to uncover the mathematics of the universe, the fundamental physik; then Priestly and Lavoisier uncovered the hidden riddles of chemistry, and by the 19th century whole industries were based on technological engineering. This created a fundamental shift in the highest art of all: philosophy. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) argued that human understanding went through stages of development, from the theological through the metaphysical to the 'positive', or scientific. Karl Marx (1818-1883) expounded the philosophy of 'materialism', fiercely rationalist and atheistic, and while his scientifically observed conclusions have been rejected by 150 years of capitalist indoctrination, his belief in scientific truth and the liberating power of technology have been embraced by peoples to whom his very name is verboten. Darwin nailed the last hammer in the coffin of the religious fantasists, and as the 20th century dawned mankind had a reasonable grip on the surprising ways in which the world went round. What then, of metaphysics? And more importantly, what of art as a means of interpreting the subtle complexities of reality; what of art as the window on the soul? There is no soul, says Sigmund Freud, only death and sex with your mother. The resultant truth is so basic, so in front of our eyes that we barely give it a second thought. With no God to give glory to, with no meaning of life to uncover, with no inner essence left to express in the cold chaos of bombarding atoms, art was beheaded, its entrails thrown to the advertising industry, its heart fed to the Hollywood moguls, and its corpse pressed into service as a lowly scarecrow in a barren scrubland called 'entertainment'.

We don't need metaphysics any more, just diversion from the repetitive misery of capitalist production. Many of the great creative artists discovered in this new secular marketism that success could be very lucrative. Dickens, Millais, Gilbert and Sullivan were the early conquerors of the entertainment industry. Buster Keaton, Bing Crosby, Paul Robeson, Dali, Picasso, Caruso, Stravinsky among the first great generation of celebrity. Trouble is, though, an industry called entertainment has none of the inherent development, none of the diversity, none of the necessary elitisms that a world called art used to have. Capitalism is a machine, and can no more recognise quality than a computer can choose a nice dress. So at this end of the old American century, we no longer have any quality left, at least in the observable realm of mass media. Mediocrity is both cheap and possessed of that oh so marketable boy-next-door look. Art is a nine-to-five business like any other business and the result is one dirty great pile of rancid bull excrement. Suck it and see.

Curiously, though, in one of those great self-consuming snakes of dialectical resolution Mother Earth is wont to produce, the cure is straightforward. Our own, stunted, starved and petty little culture is quite capable of unifying the fields, to coin a phrase from theoretical physics. Metaphysics is only a general label for anything not covered by regular physics. Regular physics, i'm pleased to say at present, is a little bit stuck. Bacon, Comte, Marx et al assumed that physical science would eventually answer everything and there'd be no need for esoteric speculation. In the 21st century, though, the physical sciences are hitting brick walls on a daily basis. One end of chemistry is lost without a map in a pesky little maze called the human brain. Biology is dazzled by its own headlights as it plays truth or dare with a cute little magic box called genetics. The physicists, led by Stephen Hawking, are finding that one end of their math doesn't match the other end of their math, and neither end semms to explain what they can see through their telescopes. We are awash with chaos theories and uncertainty principles. But now, more than three years after the ruminations that resulted in my first string quartet, I can finally see where this is going.

Firstly, we must predict an artistic renaissance. We do this for two reasons. One is to do with the modern rule of physics that says the scientist has a measurable affect on the experiment merely by observing it. Inductively, therefore, if we are to predict a renaissance we might cause one to occur, simply on the laws of physics. Second, though, is the truth of the matter. People now need art more than ever before. Science can't explain everything. It can't even explain peace, love or the way a lamb dupiaza sticks to your teeth for hours. God has fewer in his fan clubs than ever, as people finally worked out how come women have belly-buttons and gave up on Jesus, magic fish sandwiches or no. Society, particularly a global society, works more by greed and chaos than any other guiding priciple and we can see our world spiralling from one localised disaster to another. Art is an answer in itself, a refuge, a point of light to guide solution to any of life's stress. Not as diversionary entertainment, but as a cerebral and emotional engagement, a pointer to a better way of life. Those thirty seconds you take on a painting refresh your spirit in ways no doctor has instruments to measure. The enriched existence provided by a good book has no equivalent on dvd. Music, good music, is another world, an alternate to your drab grey universe, a new colour for your walls, a new recipe for your ears to feast on. And how does art re-engage with society? By unifying the fields ! I'd better explain. Art/Science. Art/Maths. We are already doing that part. That's precisely how you are reading this. Technology, particularly information technology, is the new realm of artistic endeavour, as creative souls take what they like from the beauty of the new machines. But there's another field, metaphysics, that needs to be combined with these two. Art/Physics/Metaphysics equals the whole universe, by self-definition. You can call it philosophy if you like: philosophy in a new invigorated and relevant form. Many of us are employing this unification instinctively. An hour in Paint Shop Pro. A week in Cubase. Speculating on the meaning of our life as instinctively as a cat dissects a sparrow. Worrying our own inner flesh as the basis for artistic truth: as natural as scratching your arse.

But we shouldn't see the alliance of art and technology as anything new. There is no way the great painters got to perspective without the latest in Euclidian geometry. Mozart picked up on a new-fangled device called the piano and its capabilities both emotional and dynamic. The surrealists got into cinema. Stockhausen got into electronics. Indeed, it is art, above all human activity that shows us the potential of each new technological wonder. It's all hand in hand. Art produces wonder. Art tells us things beyond the remit of any god or any abacus. Art is the window on ourselves, the only mirror with a true reflection.

While writing my first string quartet I was speculating on the barrier currently present in theoretical physics. Three years later I have a tentative solution. After Planck and Heisenberg came the onslaught of newly discovered subatomic particles, the fuzzy logic of quantum mechanics, and now the riddle of string theory. String theory is the result of the greatest mathematical minds across three generations. They tried to explain how subatomic particles could behave as both the isolated points in Bohr's atomic structure at the same time as behaving like waves as they do in quantum physics. They decided on bits of string, which could be waves when stretched out as well as points if viewed edge-wise as the essential fundamental substance of everything. Meantime Hawking attempts to produce a unified theory that explains everything from Newton's motion to Einstein's space-time continuum, from gravity to electromagnetism to black holes to all those bits of string. Hawking is stuck on the maths. The string theorists did the maths, but with annoying results: the sums only added up if you have a universe of several dimensions, at least seven of them, rather than the four we have in our space time. Since this is of course ludicrous, they're stuck as well. But while writing my music, lost in numeral babble, I got to this idea: an earth that revolved was ludicrous; flying machines were ludicrous. A multi-dimensional universe: doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to me. Our sense organs evolved around our evolving brains. Most animals can perceive at least the three spacial dimensions, and we assume an awareness of the fourth time dimension. But that's just our sense organs, here on this fairly isolated planet. Even here, we have fish with electromagnetic awareness, bats with sonar, elephants who communicate in the inaudible sub-bass. A multi-dimensional universe: at least seven dimensions. The missing three could answer Hawking's riddle: each dimensional field would appear to respond differently to gravitational and electromagnetic forces; perhaps they react differently to the Einsteinian space-warp effect. As for string: I see a subatomic particle as possessed of different qualities in different dimensions; while all we've really got to in our centuries of higher mathematics are the basics of our own Euclidian reflection. A point. A line. Ergo: a piece of string. It's like Martian canals, or the constellation that looks nothing like a goat. In a multi-dimensional universe, a subatomic particle can be anything it likes: it depends on what you think you're looking at. St. Paul's cathedral, seen from only two dimensions, looks like a semi-circle atop a square. Only when you employ the third dimension do you see the dome itself and the space it encloses. Even then, you must self-evidently employ the fourth dimension before you can appreciate the 300 year history of the artifice. What we can observe in the fifth or sixth dimensions will depend upon our theoretical acquisitiveness as well as our fabled technological prowess. The potential for such study, and here's where I go a bit Jules Verne, is like any other technology, liable to open doors we barely imagined. If you can manipulate fields in multi-dimensions, you can re-arrange space itself to suit you. Once you can control space, our current ideas about travel are immediately antiquated. Teleportation, or rather field-portation, immediately becomes a theoretical possibility: nevermind going to Chelsea, you simply make a man-sized slice of spatial Chelsea come to you. From this follows the likelihood of interstellar travel, the wormhole of science fiction; and from that follows the inevitable discovery of intelligent life-forms on other worlds. But the answers will be found in art as much as anywhere else. The mechanic cannot design anything the artist hadn't already conceived in transcendental imagination. Considering history any other way is simply putting the cart before the dream. Science dies without dreamers. The rigid tramlines of experiment and observation only take you so far. Likewise a string quartet, while reliant on mathematical integrity and balance, will only succeed if the underlying imagination holds sway. Art gives us all possible futures as it reflects the seminal aspects of the artist's present. Our future depends on taking those best aspects of our present and setting them to evolutionary improvement. The science of the score editor or the sequencing software is secondary to the inspiration of the user. The developments of future science are secondary to the uses we find for it. Last one to Neptune buys the drinks.