The Well-Tempered Four Seasons project
May 03, 2025 – Louis Trépanier
A new project begins. The CGQ, with generous support from the Canada Council for Arts, is commissioning 12 composers to each write a prelude and fugue for guitar quartet. In what is clearly theft of Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, each composer was assigned a month of the year and one of the twelve semi-tones as a tonal center, and asked to draw inspiration from on the one hand a childhood memory related to their month and on the other, notions of climate change, climate education, justice, or efforts made in this field. The juxtaposition of these two seemingly unconnected elements is meant to reflect the idea of wanting future generations to experience happy childhood moments of their own while feeling concern about the uncertainty ahead. From this would come motivation to take action.
The twelve composers are Clarice Assad (January / B♭); Carlo Domeniconi (February / F♯); Celil Refik Kaya(March / G♯); Dusan Bogdanovic (April / F); Olga Amelkina-Vera (May / D); Christine Donkin (June / C♯); João Luiz (July / B); Andrea Clearfield (August / E); Dale Kavangh (September / C); former CGQ member Renaud Côté-Giguère (October / A); former CGQ member Patrick Roux (November / G); and Sergio Assad (December / E♭).
Stay tuned for more news on this project!