Matt Huff & Carissa Devenport

Artist's Statement - Carissa Devenport

For my final project, I would like to play a quartet piece with my colleagues Matt Huff, Emeline Burton, and Hannah Hatch, and play a piece Juvenoia, a word that means when people are "confronted with the fear of changing times, technologies, and attitudes."- Stephen Mitton. This piece can represent some of the eye rolling, carefree attitudes that people have about being careful with the use of clean energy, and taking care of the planet, because we don't have Planet B.

Artist's Statement - Matt Huff

For our final project we performed Stephen Mitton’s piece for string quartet titled “Juvenoia”. Juvenoia is a term coined by sociologist David Finkelhor which is a combination of the words juvenile and paranoia. It’s used to describe the fear or hostility directed by an older generation toward a younger one, or youth culture in general.

Although the original intention of the piece was to illustrate this phenomenon, classical music can take on many different meanings and the interpretation can be broadened to include general backlash to change. Fundamentally, for our environment to be protected, there needs to be a major societal shift in behavior. As a result, there will inevitably be resistance and the composition reflects that.

As we set out preparing this project, there were various stages that we went through. Ultimately, a successful performance required a musical vision and technical proficiency within the ensemble to present it. A lot of time was spent learning to play together as a quartet in timing, intonation, and tone color. Our goal was to present a work that contained the biting wit and playfulness that Stephen Mitton wrote that accurately represented Juvenoia and in conjunction, societal resistance to change.

"Juvenoia"