Sestina (Piano Quartet)

The score to John Woolrich’s Sestina

Sestina is a piano quartet first performed in 1997. The title refers to a French verse form and reflects the piece’s six-part structure, in which key words from the first stanza reoccur and repeat in a different order throughout the subsequent ones. Various figures reappear across the 12-minute work: a scurrying scale that serves as punctuation; a jerky melody with constantly shifting time signatures that is by turns dance-like and percussive. A faltering, march-like section opens the coda, before a gently rocking violin melody; Sestina then lapses into an unexpected silence, as if unfinished. This product comprises the score.