Wallace was written during the year 2007-2008, in Dublin. It comes from the poem "The Snow Man," by Wallace Stevens, combined with readings on creationist theories of time. According to creationist physicists, six thousand years is a reasonable period of time for the earth to exist; this is because the speed of light has been constantly slowing down, allowing us to be closer to the speed of light, and (through Einstein) slowing our perception of time.
This quartet was the first piece I wrote using some sort of microtonal inflection. In this case, the microtones are almost all nearly "quartertones," but with an ear toward the rationally-tuned interval of 11/8. In a few movements, the instruments play in full-fledged rational tuning; in the Chorale, each repeat brings the string quartet closer and closer to small-number ratios, necessitating stillness.
This recording is from a reading session by the fEARnoMUSIC ensemble at Willamette University in April, 2009.