Rare Performance of Franklin's Musical Composition Saturday Morning

Hopelessly talented and ever-restless, Ben Franklin, our town's namesake, just couldn't resist trying his hand at musical composition.

The Franklin Public Library will explore this aspect of our Ben with the help of the Metro-West
Symphony Orchestra, Saturday, Jan. 17, at 11 am at 118 Main Street.

Pattison Story, one of the leaders of MSO, explained  that the String Quartet experts attribute to Franklin is an unusual work in two fundamental ways. First, string quartets at that time were two violins, plus viola, cello. Franklin wrote the piece for three violins & cello. He also used a technique called scordatura, where the instruments are tuned at different pitches than traditional. Next, the piece requires each player to use only those open strings, never using their fingers to change the pitch. The melody & harmony are created by each player playing the correct open string at the right time, so that the melodic line is woven together by all four players, rather than one person playing consecutive notes of the melody.

"We will play it as conceived," said Story, who noted that since Franklin's time, arrangements have been made to play it without the scordatura tuning, and with the more "normal" use of fingers to develop melody and harmony..

"No other piece is known to have been created this way," she added. What was behind his choice of scordatura?  Was it his love of puzzles? inventions? mathematics? No one knows.

Story said the concert will continue with other music written around the same time as Franklin’s quartet, and by European composers who Franklin would have been familiar with: 

• Mozart Flute Quartet in D-flute, violin, viola, cello 
• Hoffmeister Duo for Violin & Viola-(interesting tidbit: Mozart hated the flute & wrote 3 flute quartets despite his dislike of the instrument, but Hoffmeister loved it and composed lots of chamber works for flute, as well as being a publisher and friend of Mozart and Beethoven.) 
• Mozart Horn Quintet-French horn, violin, 2 violas, and cello