Garden of Eros (2002)

Garden of Eros (Tuin van Eros) is based upon an idea which is unusual, if not completely wrong for a string quartet: a piece for solo violin, accompanied by three string instruments.

While composing it, I realised that this idea was not far away from the roots of the string quartet: Haydn’s early quartets. However, the piece does not sound like Haydn.

The title comes from a long and beautiful love poem in 50 quatrains written by Jan Engelman in 1934. I follow the sentiment of the poem somewhat loosely in the music, but the structure of the poem quite rigidly: the piece contains as many beats as the poem contains syllables.

The work lasts 12 minutes and is written for Arditti Quartet, to the memory of my brother Jurriaan, the composer.