We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.

Most people are never going to die

because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my
place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.
Certainly, those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.
We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds
the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness,
that are here.

Unweaving the Rainbow

- Richard Dawkins
Performance Notes.
Bowing

In this work, there is a separate clef used for bowing. This clef is above
the Bass clef. The bowing clef contains two lines which correspond to an
extended technique related to bowing.

Three parameters of bow techniques (bow speed, bow pressure, and the contact point) are
indicated by the following. We know from traditional technique that we can manipulate these
three factors to bring out a variety of tone colours. The following diagram, created by John
Schelleng in the 1960’s, graphically demonstrates this idea.

The notation of which bow speed is determined, shown in the example below, is borrowed
from composer Hans Thomalla. Referred to as “too-slow bow1,” with differing speeds
differentiated with the use of a jagged line (smaller spaces indicate a sound that is closer to a
standard tone, and wider portions indicate more distortion).

1
Thomalla, Hans. Cello Counterpart, Edition Juliane Klein, 2006.
Bow pressure is represented using the similar notation inspired by the works of Jacques Zafra.
The use of varying thickness of black lines to show how much relative pressure should be
applied, with the thinnest part of the wedge being normal or near-normal pressure, and the
thickest part of the wedge showing the greatest pressure, leaving almost no tone.

(for string quartet by Jacques Zafra 2017)

Harmonics
Two types of harmonics trills are present: a) An open string to an Open Node:

b) A stopped pitch to a stopped node:

The notation for open string pizzicato harmonics is similar to that of a normal harmonic with
the node represented with a diamond head.

Glissandi
Notation for left-hand chord glissandi was borrowed from Jonathan Harvey. In this notation,
thin lines show the interval of dyad while thick lines indicate segments which are to be
picked out with the bow.

Duration of performance: ca.15’00’’