henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl precarious Henning) (02/21/91)
Jeff Adler writes: >There is a string quartet attributed to Benjamin Franklin. >It is unconventional in that the players retune their strings >in a nonstandard way so that every note is played on an open string. [Ben Franklin also wrote an essay criticizing Handel's prosody] Although he never mentioned Franklin's string quartet, the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen wrote a /Symphony for Open Strings/ incorporating this very notion. A good piece. kph -- "The shrewder mobs of America, who dislike having two minds upon a subject, both determine and act upon it drunk; by which means a world of cold and tedious speculation is dispensed with." -- Washington Irving