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The Art of Eternal Agony New York
Roulette
04/23/2025 -
John King: Ten Free Palestine Quartets (All world premieres)
FLUX Quartet: Tom Chiu, Conrad Harris (Violins), Josh Henderson (Guest viola), Rubin Kodheli (Guest cello), John King (Oud)
FLUX Quartet, J. King with abstraction of Palestinian flag
(© Samuel A. Dog)
“The horror, the horror.”
Spoken by Kurz, in Heart of Darkness, by Josef Conrad
“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
Spoken by Ariel in The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Yes, the excuses for these Palestine Quartets are as fraudulent as they are manifold. The wars in Gaza, the colonial expansions in the West Bank are “political”, “historically irreconcilable”, “barbarity versus civilization” (or in James Joyce’s words, “syphilization”).
The reality, though, is–my feelings immaterial–that of 70‑year‑long, mile upon mile upon mile Guernicas. Slaughters without end. The ongoing annihilation of a culture for this century and probably the next.
John Adams made a nuanced stab at the personal feelings of terrorists and Jews in Death of Klinghoffer, and the film came close to showing the fear and trembling of the forced refugees.
Composer John King, in his Free Palestine Quartets doesn’t look for nuance. For 15 years, he has been chronicling the colonization of the West Bank, village by village.
At first, ironically, the colonizers were not Israeli. They were middle‑class Jews who leaped over their suburban gated communities to take refuge against the dark‑skinned people against whom they had no safety. Then came the Jewish Fundamentalists (supported by Christian Evangelicals). Last came the Israeli soldiers, defending the settlers. And finally–as in a replay of the 1948 geographical genocide–non‑Jewish villagers were thrown off their lands.
How did Mr. King depict these scenes? Not with grand orchestral clashes. Instead, he took the most intimate ensemble, the string quartet. Starting in 2013, he wrote a different quartet for each Palestinian village which was “ethnically cleansed” (the composer’s words) making for more than 160 works, ending (again the composer’s words) “with the current genocide.”
“The title ‘free’”, he writes, “represents also the individual freedom within the realization of each of these works.”
Ten of his works were given their world premieres here. And I could not imagine any four more appropriate players than the FLUX Quartet. Yes, they belong to a plethora of modern string quartets. Yet only FLUX takes on the most difficult, outrageous, maddening music–and plays it with the ease of a Haydn quartet.
The funny thing is that Mr. King gives his Palestine Quartets a Haydnesque diversity. The title Free Palestine is both militant and ideological. Nine of his ten works are both belligerent and playful. They go from whispers to violence. The four instruments talk with each other in pizzicati. They treacherously interrupt each other with fingers whizzing up and down the instrument.
I would like to describe each piece separately, but the FLUX Quartet let barely a caesura between each work. What was essential in all–both literally and inwardly–was Arabic music.
Literally, some of the works used ancient themes, quarter tones, glissandi like Arabic classical singers. Inward was more interesting. Like later Bartók, one feels the geographical sounds rather than noting a particular melody.
In this writer’s case, the music summoned up a sunrise breakfast in a Nilotic village, without thinking about the Muezzin wailing.
Yet that is unfair. I could also imagine–unfairly–a sirocco wind, the burning of a mosque, the cries of children. Unfair because, Mr. King, I feel, has composed work inspired by rather than imitating situations.
Nine of these world premieres lasted about four minutes each. But so interesting were the sounds that one wouldn’t dare call them miniatures or bagatelles.
For the tenth work al fatur, the composer entered to play the oud. (This added to his repertoire of viola and guitar). This was a classical taqsim, a jazz structure, where initial rhythm and melody leads to virtuosic variations from each instrument. Not the FLUX Quartet need to show their digital chops. Their genius had been shown in the previous work.
What complemented–no, partnered–the music was the screen behind the players. What looked like parchment maps but were probably yellowed British 1930’s maps of the West.
Though it could have been a cartographer’s dream. Names that could have come from Borges or Lord of the Rings or Italo Calvino. We can literally only imagine names like Yibna or Salabnaor or Iskud or Arya or Saffiryya. Yet they existed, were erased, the original inhabitants perhaps vanished.
The original olive groves and market towns and ancient cities now destroyed and turned into–oh, what a horrid moniker–”Settlements”.
Mr. King’s music was a gorgeous map in itself, creating soundscapes which ranged from mountainous reverberations to the silence of a desert. Yet behind this New York‑born composer’s notes were feelings of worlds destroyed, cultures erased, the echoes of crying and anger and ferocity. And after this hour‑long journey, one wishes, like D.H. Lawrence, to “weep like a child for the past.”
Harry Rolnick
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