String Quartet No. 1 "New York" Mov. 1

Finally made some real progress on my first "real" quartet. I just finished the first movement of a planned 3 or 4, and figured I would get some feedback.

I usually like to share the story behind my pieces, so here's the story to this one: Back when I was just starting to get interested in serious composition, I was looking for good ideas. At the time I took brief trip to New York City, and decided I would write a quartet trying to depict the city (in no small part inspired by the fact that I was at the time working on Dvorak's American Quartet with my group). The initial rhythm in the viola and cello (used to depict the train) I came up with then. I tried to write it out (I finished it about six months ago), but due to my inexperience with composition the piece developed very differently from what I had planned, ultimately being a nice piece that I'm still proud of, but still a fairly simplistic single movement piece. 

Finally I am returning to this idea, more experienced than before, and I'm pretty satisfied with how it's progressing so far. Hope you enjoy!

Repeated time is borderline on this part. It devolves from being motivic to being almost banal. But I think you cut it off around that point...

Crossed voices seems to be a problem for you especially as you get into the middle section. Try to keep each voice clear so the melody is the first thing that comes out.

I didn't really feel myself traveling very much with this one. It seems pretty segmented and planned, which is the opposite of exploration, at least to me.

I'm curious to see how this unfolds.

28 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

Repeated time is borderline on this part. It devolves from being motivic to being almost banal. But I think you cut it off around that point...

Hm. I'll keep that in mind. Maybe add a little more variation to the rhythm?

29 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

Crossed voices seems to be a problem for you especially as you get into the middle section. Try to keep each voice clear so the melody is the first thing that comes out.

Do you mind providing some examples for this? I thought I had the melody pretty clear so I'd like to see where it gets muddy.

30 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

I didn't really feel myself traveling very much with this one. It seems pretty segmented and planned, which is the opposite of exploration, at least to me.

I'll look into that. The section that I want to have a sort of circular, forward motion is from m1-59. The sfz that is passed around in 60 and then the diminuendo is supposed to signify the arrival at the city, and after that point I intended to give the feeling of being excited/interested by all the sights as you see as you amble around the city.

35 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

I'm curious to see how this unfolds.

I am as well haha. Thanks for the feedback!

13 minutes ago, SebastianViola said:

Do you mind providing some examples for this?

Section at 65.

Section at 119.

15 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

Section at 65.

Section at 119.

 

 

Thanks!