The Ancestors: a ballet in eight tableau

The Ancestors: ballet in eight tableux

1. The Medium
2. Pas de Deux
3. Cascade and Groove
4. Blues
5. Rumination
6. Phrygian
7. Remembrance
8. Consequence (Consequents)

50 years ago, as a teenage rock musician just discovering concert music through encounters with
Beethoven’s last string quartet and Ravel’s only quartet, I fantasized composing a piece for electric
guitar and string quartet. I had that opportunity in the late 80’s and early 90’s with a trilogy of such
pieces (On the Verge, Troubadour Songs, and Physical Property).

The idea of combining electric and acoustic, the iconic rock and roll instrument and the quintessential
classical ensemble as well as the concomitant cultural baggage of both, seemed like an obvious step
forward to me but it was greeted with skepticism in the beginning. I now regard these works as
signature pieces. Physical Property in particular, is like a beloved ancestor, born in another time but
continuing to live in me through 100+ performances with dozens of string quartets over the past 35
years. With every performance, every reunion I wonder: what would I do now? What would the
descendent of Physical Property sound like?

There is something about the fade-out ending of Physical Property that never actually ends and it was
easy to imagine it living on, its essence wafting through the tableaux of this new work until it is quoted
in movement 7 – Remembrance. While the end of Physical Property is the only literal quote, there
are abstracted references to other ancestors whose DNA make up my current practice from Byrd to
Beethoven, Blues, and Zappa.

In my earlier works I cast the guitar as an equal member of the quintet, playing notes and rhythms,
contributing to the harmony and counterpoint and participating in conversations on the same plane
as the string quartet. I avoided the processing effects that could potentially put the guitar in another
acoustic or psychological space.

There is “normal” playing in The Ancestors also but this work frequently explores the processing effects
that give the guitar access to those other spaces, echoing the past and freezing the present, diffusing,
detuning, and harmonizing, creating ripples, wobbles, and buzzes. The textures that arise from the
guitar effects act on the quartet less as harmony and counterpoint and more as backdrops or scrims
that change the sense of venue. There is an otherness to these sounds and they imbue the mood with
an eerie mystery. Given the explicit conversation with my musical past a I imagined a séance with the
guitar cast as the spirit guide or medium accessing other planes for the quartet.

It has been over 20 years since Anthony Marwood and I met playing Physical Property together and that
has led to decades of fruitful friendship and collaboration. The Ancestors is dedicated to him.

—Steven Mackey