a piece for string quartet (2018-2019), 8-13’.

If you’re interested in performing Amulet, please contact me at benliebermanmusic@gmail.com.

Amulet contains several open-ended improvisation sections. The piece can run for as short as 8 minutes, and as long as 13 minutes (or potentially longer).

Amulet was recognized with a Merit Award in the 2020 Tribeca New Music Division 1 Young Composers Competition.

Here’s a recording of Sirius Quartet’s first performance of Amulet, at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vermont. (This recording is also up on my soundcloud.) I have since revised Amulet. Stay tuned for Sirius Quartet’s studio recording of the revised version. (Woot!)

Program Note:

Amulet: a bridge from the tangible to the unseen; a charged object, that can transport or imbue. Wear it to heal, to hide, to take flight or refuge; conversely, to empower, to grow, to give rise to the unrealized within. A—mu—let: the lilt of the “let,” rolling off the soft “mu,” falling from the half-open “A.” Amulet: a song in itself.

Amulet is really an aspirational title. It will take a whole lot longer to get there (if “there” is even attainable or definable), but maybe this piece is a step in that direction — toward affording entry to that ineffable space where dreams and thoughts and memories intermingle; toward connection, bridging worlds; toward getting closer. Here, try this on. Don the Amulet.

I keep coming back to this story that Carl Jung recounts in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, in which, at age 10, Jung carved at the top of a wooden ruler “a little manikin, about two inches long, with frock coat, top hat, and shiny black boots.” He sawed off the manikin and placed it, wrapped in a little wool coat, in his pencil case, along with a smooth oblong stone which he had painted – the manikin’s stone. Jung hid the pencil case in his family’s forbidden attic, where no one would find it, and, in doing so, found a sense of peace with himself. In all difficult situations, he would think of the “carefully bedded-down and wrapped-up manikin and his smooth, prettily colored stone,” hidden safe among the rafters. Occasionally, he would steal away to visit the manikin, bringing him tiny scrolls with inscriptions in a secret language which he would leave behind in the pencil case, a ceremonial act.

I’m sure not about to try to analyze that story. (Jung has that covered.) But there is something about that notion of externalizing, of imbuing an object with a certain power, of finding solace and refuge in that object, in the mere knowledge of its existence, in the ritual of the visits…the creation of a sacred space…the making of an amulet…there is something here that resonates for me, with this piece. I can’t say why, exactly. Probably something to do with the cello.

I’d like to thank John Mallia, my faculty advisor at Vermont College of Fine Arts, for his insights and encouragement as I worked on Amulet (and for steering me to shore when I was floundering about in the shoals). I’d also like to thank Sirius Quartet, who were a huge source of inspiration for this piece, and to whom it is dedicated. Also shout out to Emily, Mom, Karin, Blake, Trev and Simone, who all nudged me along the way.