programme note

In like knotted strings, I looked to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, whose literature often tackles themes relating to infinity, labyrinths, and intertextuality. Having established a basic ‘library’ of sound gestures and microtonal chords, I wrote a piece in which I flesh out these materials and explore a handful of their possibilities, with quasi-quotations which provide a glimpse of a musical composition which may or may not exist in a different timeline. In keeping with the Borgesian themes that inspired the work, the piece presents multiple versions of certain passages. Each version leads to a different outcome, which may or may not lead (back) to another version of that same idea. Gestures and harmonies are recontextualised and presented as half-remembered recollections. As far as a reading of the form of the work is concerned, one may approach the work from different angles, all of which are equally legitimate. In the grand scheme of the strucure, each of the four members (or narratives) of the quartet follows their own paths as the music progresses. Sometimes these parts converge in a rhythmically, harmonically, or gesturally homogenius fashion, only to diverge later on. This aspect of the work presented the greatest challenge for me, as I sought to establish the meta-narrative of the music whilst ensuring that the work stands as a cohesive whole.

— Njabulo Phungula

“Some genres describe time as the ramification of alternatives, others as the inevitable enactment of a timeless pattern. In some, alternatives are only possible at a few critical moments; time is like a knotted string with deterministic interstices leading to rare and dense moments of choice.”

— Gary Saul Morson, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time

“Almost immediately, I understood: “the garden of forking paths” was the chaotic novel; the phrase “the various futures (not to all) suggested to me the forking in time, not in space.”

— from Jorge Luis Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths