A String Quartet Creates a Soundtrack for Divorce

In 2008, Victoria Paterson, a violinist in New York, was walking across Central Park after a dinner date with her husband, Robert, a percussionist and composer. The two were commenting on how they had several friends who were getting divorced and they didn't know how to appropriately respond.

"What do you when a friend gets divorce?" she asked. "Do you send them flowers or chocolates?"

The couple had recorded an album called "Classical Wedding Music" several years earlier and this led to an epiphany. "We began thinking of wedding music standards that could be recast," she said. Pachelbel's Canon in D, the wedding standard, became Pachelbel's Canon in Divorce (set as a minor-key dirge); Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream was reworked as Midsummer Nightmare; Beethoven's Ode to Joy became "Ode to Sorrow."  Read More