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To my knowledge, no other contemporary American composer has cultivated the genre of string quartet as vastly as has Ben Johnston (b. 1926), who produced ten works that span a period of nearly fifty years.1Johnston, a proponent of extended microtonality, has reconciled his eclectic interests in just intonation, serialism, neo-classicism, minimalism, vernacular music, jazz, rock, and hymnody within his stage and dance music, orchestral and chamber pieces, electronic and aleatoric music, and particularly his string quartets. In the latter, he has exploited the intonational potentials of string instruments far beyond the already-established idioms of the genre. Somewhat different from the groundbreaking technological experiments of his composition colleagues at the University of Illinois, Johnston--a pupil of Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch, and John Cage--embraced the pioneering spirit so predominant at this institution, posing an essential question: "What might the European music have been like, had the idea of temperament been rejected?" 2
To date, only the Kepler Quartet has so deeply explored the implications of Johnston's provocative question implemented in his string quartets. Since the premiere of the composer's Quartet no. 10 in 2002, violinists Sharan Leventhal and Eric Segnitz, violist Brek Renzelman, and cellist Karl Lavine have exclusively dedicated themselves to the monumental task of performing and recording all of Johnston's quartets, embarking on a fourteen-year journey with the cooperation and guidance of the veteran composer himself. 3In 2016, New World Records released the long-awaited edition of the Kepler's recording of Johnston's Quartets nos. 6, 7, and 8. This disc follows the 2006 and 2011 release of two discs containing Quartets nos. 2, 3, 4, 9, and nos. 1, 5, 10, respectively. The ensemble's endeavor is especially impressive if we consider that in the hands of Johnston we are not dealing with sound structures paradigmatic of the genre. Except the serial,...