For the last 30 years of his life, Aaron Copland lived in ranch-style house built in the 1940s on Washington Street in Cortlandt Manor, New York. After his death in 1990, the house became a National Historical Landmark, and also the site of a residency program for composers. In 2017, one of them was Juri Seo, a composer and pianist based in New Jersey.

Now, there was a lot of snow in Cortlandt Manor that year, and maybe that had something to do with it, but the chamber work Juri Seo worked on there was titled “String Quartet - Infinite Season.” As she explains:

“After each snow, golden sunlight hinted at the spring’s coming warmth. The turbulent fluctuation of the weather made me acutely aware of the passage of time. The seasons seemed to alternate by the day, yet the certainty of spring never faltered … This was my solace: the seasons, with their infinite gradations of difference, will return again, and the birds and insects will carry on, cycle after cycle, an infinite rebirth.”

This new work was written for the Argus Quartet, who gave its premiere performance on today’s date in 2017 at Princeton University.