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Work


Shudder

for string quartet

Year:  2015   ·  Duration:  7m 30s

Year:  2015
Duration:  7m 30s

Composer:   Gemma Peacocke

Films, Audio & Samples

Gemma Peacocke: Shudder — A...

Embedded audio
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Sample Score

Sample: pages 1–4 of score

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About

I wrote Shudder in 2014-15 when I was first studying with Julia Wolfe. I was really interested in elevating texture as a material for composing, and I based the piece on an abstraction of the physical phenomenon of sleep myoclonus: the phenomenon of involuntary twitches or jerks which most often occur while we fall asleep or undergo anaesthesia.

When I was a child I experienced hypnagogic myoclonic jerks quite often while I was drifting off to sleep. I would have the stomach-flipping sensation of falling. . . before suddenly jerking awake, and finding myself just where I’d been, flat on my back in bed.

When I was writing the piece I thought of these movements as interruptions in overarching, woven structural processes, punctuated by bolts of energy — or shudders.