A weird and wonderful merging of modern and classical musical elements marked the four pieces written by University graduate composers and performed by the acclaimed FLUX Quartet at Crowell Concert Hall on Thursday, Nov. 13. Disjointed melodies, long pauses, meticulous scratching and elongated notes all merged to create a strangely harmonious sonic landscape, breaking the boundaries of the “classical” and highlighting the distinct perspectives and eccentricities of the individuals who created them.

Almost as important as the notes themselves were the concepts that birthed them — the abstract ideas that informed the compositions and drove their presentations. The meaning behind the pieces’ construction added profundity to their performance. “Pavilion 1” by Max Heath ’07, for example, was characterized by both its explicitly aural qualities—somber melodies, slow movement, long pauses—and the carefully considered conceptual framework behind them.

“The main conceit of the piece is that it employs a notational system that I came up with that allows for additive and subtractive processes,” Heath, a Middletown-based composer, pianist and performer now in his second year of studying composition in the masters program, said. “After the melody is first stated, it is subjected to increasingly dramatic subtractive processes. Each performer has to remove more and more beats from each successive measure either by subdividing faster or by simply skipping over things. At the end of the piece, the performers extend the melody more and more by adding in rests or holding out notes for longer durations.”

Heath’s fellow composers found common ground on several fronts throughout the evening. All gestured toward a camaraderie forged through their study under a common mentor, the renowned Professor of Music Anthony Braxton. They also found unique ways to filter multiple influences through their individual temperaments and styles. In “Travel isn’t, greater distance” by Sally Norris (a composer and pianist currently working on her graduate thesis project), technique and assemblage modernized the compositions, while the violins and cello that performed the piece contributed classical qualities. The broken notes and scratching and plucking of the violin were reminiscent of a synthesized, electronic beat.

The composers were also willing to fully explicate the ideas behind their musical pieces. While Norris explored modes of notation, Ivan Naranjo, a composer who collaborates with visual artista such as Sylvie Bouteiller and Walter Verdin, discussed an interest in soft complex sounds and vibrations. Meanwhile, Parks—a composer and musician studying composition, computational modeling and social design at the University—ultimately sees emotional reactions to his piece as inconsequential. This was reinforced by both the abrupt uproars of sounds after long pauses and the hushed tones that were barely heard, which did not allow one to achieve any relationship with the composition.

“I want the aesthetic to be the first thing to leave the experience,” he says. “That is, because the piece exists within the rubric of a particular convention, a diatonic equal-tempered pitch set, the sonic material, in its constant emotional tugging, becomes emotionally superfluous. The observer observes the motion of the piece, the observer is within the current, and ruptures should jar the observer and upset the experience.”

In contrast, Heath was interested when asked what emotions his piece tried to convey. Within the music, he said he tried to convey playfulness and mild competitiveness in some parts, and mystery and sadness in others.

“Above all I think the main emotional impact for me comes in the form of this sense of the human inevitably showing through an almost purely mathematical system,” he said.

Heralded by Josh Kosman of The San Francisco Chronicle as “one of the most fearless and important new-music ensembles around who has brought a new renaissance to quartet music,” FLUX Quartet’s stellar performance provided a commonality of medium that helped tie together the distinct personalities evident in each of the compositions. These innovative and experimental composers, however, ultimately presented pieces that spoke for themselves, with each musician seemingly listening to the beat of his or her own drum.