Description
Michael Kosch, TITIAN (string trio)
The string trio TITIAN continues a personal project of mine to write works for every subset of the string quartet ensemble, each piece inspired by paintings, drawings, and sculptures of Italian Renaissance artists.
Why a trio setting for TITIAN? “Three-ness” pervades Titian’s oeuvre, perhaps most famously in Allegory of Prudence: three human faces, gazing in three directions, above the faces of three animals similarly positioned. This numerical undercurrent also surfaces in his full-figure groupings, architectural depictions, and compositional structure.
Further, from a biographical standpoint, the convivial trio of painter Titian, sculptor/architect Jacopo Sansovino, and poet/scholar/diplomat Pietro Aretino comprised an informal yet influential cultural “think tank” in sixteenth-century Venice. Musically speaking, TITIAN is a sequence of contrasting, echoing, interlocking sections, an attempt to evoke aspects of the painter’s world: his studio, for instance, chock-a-block with finished and in-progress masterworks; or the swirling streets of Renaissance Venice—crossing “fragrant” canals crowded with vessels of every description—that open onto intricately tiled plazas surrounding villas and splendorous cathedrals.
But most immediately, the music is meant to convey the power, variety, and fertility of Titian’s creative achievement.
TITIAN is dedicated to the Suys Trio.
— Recorded August 2023 at “Lancry Studio” – Paris
