en·croaching
/inˈkrōCH,enˈkrōCH/
intrusion on a person’s territory or a thing considered to be a right

ep·i·taph
/ˈepəˌtaf/
a phrase or form of words written in memory of a person, place, or belief who (that) has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone.

Here in 2020, while we were just getting to the point where COVID-19 was somewhat receding and things were beginning to slowly return to a new normal, some U.S. states are experiencing the number of cases reported as actually increasing. This implies that there could be a second wave of infections. On top of that angst, there are protests and unrest across America that began because of the killing of black men in Minneapolis and Atlanta by those employed to protect us.

I began to get a sense that these socio-medical events are encroaching on the freedoms we have enjoyed as Americans. It seems to me that some — if not many — of our liberties may be eroding over the next years of my life. If governments impose “protections” on us that rob us of our ability to live free lives, there is a death of those constitutional liberties. At that point, I think someone needs to write an epitaph for those “deaths.”

A preeminent Chicago string quartet approached me to write a piece for a series of chamber concerts planned to take place in mid-October 2020. The movements of my String Quartet No.1 will offer a commentary on the death of those liberties, and the increasing evidence that political civility among our people has also died. Add that to the end of live concerts as we know it, and there are quite a few experiential “death sentences” just in the first half of the year 2020.

You will see newsprint with varying opacity throughout the album cover. Here is the source of that newsprint from The New York Times (see the image). Very sad fact: the newsprint is all of the names of the people that have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. as of May 24, 2020. As the sub-title profoundly states: “They were not simply names on a list. They were us.” The raven plays an interesting role in this album artwork as well. It is used to represent two aspects: ravens are a symbol of death, while the white in the “Q” is to represent hope.

It is with some sadness that I compose for what appears to be the death of institutions that I dearly love – at least in their current form. Today, I see, in real-time, the death of large-scale arts performance, political civility, civil rights progress, tens of thousands of COVD-19 lives, as well as uncertainty in the ability to worship in-person as religious congregations. I visualize that all of these “death sentences” are crawling over each other to reach the top headline. To me, these “death sentences” now appear to be morbidly competitive encroaching epitaphs.

———–

From Ron Arden, leader, Allegro Quartet:

Whether it be on a stage or, as in the Baroque and Classical eras, in the living rooms of avid fans and promoters, The Lake County Symphony Orchestra (LCSO) is taking this moment to announce the first in a series of intimate concerts scheduled for October 16, 17, and 18, 2020 in Lake Forest, Libertyville, and Barrington Illinois. The principal strings of the LCSO, also known as the Allegro Quartet, will play Beethoven’s Opus 18 No.1 String Quartet and premiere, for the first time, String Quartet No. 1, Encroaching Epitaphs, by LCSO composer in residence Charles Brown.