Uploaded May 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
I composed this piece using twelve tone rows derived from the name Anita DeFrancesco which were transformed in the usual ways (I, R, RI) and others.
Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. As a composer he has written pieces in all genres, including works for vocal orchestra and soloists ("A Cabaret for Cesare Pavese," "Der Schatten eines Traumes," "Das Buch der Blauen Rose"), chamber music (strings quartets and a sextet), concertos ("Concerto for String Orchestra," "Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra dedicato ad Anita DeFrancesco"), the large orchestral piece "Love-- for Three Orchestras and Large Organ"), and chamber works for vocalist and small ensemble ("Le sang des rêves.") Randolph Pitts has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history, with Sigmund Freud and his successors such as Jacques Lacan being an area of concentration. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world.
I composed this piece using twelve tone rows derived from the name Anita DeFrancesco which were transformed in the usual ways (I, R, RI) and others.
Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. As a composer he has written pieces in all genres, including works for vocal orchestra and soloists ("A Cabaret for Cesare Pavese," "Der Schatten eines Traumes," "Das Buch der Blauen Rose"), chamber music (strings quartets and a sextet), concertos ("Concerto for String Orchestra," "Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra dedicato ad Anita DeFrancesco"), the large orchestral piece "Love-- for Three Orchestras and Large Organ"), and chamber works for vocalist and small ensemble ("Le sang des rêves.") Randolph Pitts has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history, with Sigmund Freud and his successors such as Jacques Lacan being an area of concentration. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world.
![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [1 of 2 total]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kuyEIDaKL8Y/mqdefault.jpg "Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [1 of 2 total]
ABOUT the String Quartet in Two Movements, composer Billy Jim Layton has this to say: The
quartet was written during 1955 and early 1956 while I was at the American Academy in Rome as a
Rome Prize Fellow. It is a composition to which I devoted a great deal of thought and effort and, as
I look back on it, it seems to me that it represents a kind of summation of my artistic development
and convictions up to that point. In it my aim was to achieve the widest range of expression possible
without lapsing into incoherence, by always maintaining the strongest formal control.
The thought and effort expended by Layton on this work has resulted in a Quartet which holds
qualities of extraversion and introversion in an unusual balance, with areas of high emotional
tension and vigor being set off against other statements of the utmost passivity and inwardness,
sometimes almost expressionist in esthetic. A highly complex treatment of rhythmic resources is
always in evidence, whether the music flows along with an ethereal line singing above a lightly
punctuated counterpoint, or steps out in jazzy, muscular syncops. Indeed, rhythm would seem to
be the real heart of this Quartet. In more than one section, it constitutes the entire subject under
discussion. Instrumental color, however, is another string preoccupation of the composer. The
resources of his medium are constantly exploited to the full, bringing into combination writing con
sordino and senza sordino; non vibrato and molto vibrato; col legno plus high and low pizzicato.
There are even trills beginning as whole-step intervals and gradually contracting to quarter-tones.
Every measure of the score bespeaks meticulous handling of all materials; a high consciousness of
the potency of timbre, and a delight in its manipulation.
about the composer:
Billy Jim Layton was born in Corsicana, Texas, in 1924. He studied at the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, Yale University, and Harvard. Several scholarships and prizes
were awarded him by these institutions. He has also held the Hertz Travelling Fellowship from the
University of California and the Rome Prize, 1954-57. In 1958, a grant in recognition of creative
work in music was awarded him by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in connection with
which the present recording is issued. He has received several important commissions, including
one by the Koussevitsky Foundation. Performances of his music for solo, chamber, orchestral, and
choral combinations have been given in many cities of the United States and Europe.
Claremont St ring Quartet
Marc Gottli eb, violin
Vladimi r Weisman, violin
William Schoen, viola
Irving Klein, cello
We apologize must humbly, profusely, and in a virtual paroxysm of self-deprecation, for the poor sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions per minute micro-groove recording.")
