Snake_Cake Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 (edited) Score here: https://albertdelaf.com/op7/ Here's a suite with 5 movements sharing a common thread: playful and “strange” moods, and a style blending late-Romantic, Impressionist, and jazz influences. The first movement is structured as a loose binary form interspersed by a recurring ritornello idea. The second movement employs a single octatonic scale almost throughout (C-Db-Eb-E-F#-G-A-Bb), except during the central climax where notes from outside the scale create an important contrast. The third movement was my first piece for string quartet. It’s a playful polka with a little waltz as a trio. The fourth movement is another waltz, featuring a carefree main theme that alternates with fantasmagoric episodes based on quartal and quintal chords. The final movement is in sonata form, with a coda that draws the whole suite to a frenetic close. Let me know whatcha think! Edited May 15, 2021 by Snake_Cake new video with a few tweaks Quote
PeterthePapercomPoser Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 Wow! This piece totally blew me away! Very nice job! I personally think your first foray into string quartet writing - the third movement - is the best (or at least my favorite). I am not even well versed enough in string quartet writing to know how to more critically examine this piece! Like for example - what do the arpeggios mean with the triangle notes? (I am not talking about the diamonds which indicate artificial harmonics) I tried looking it up and the only answer I can come up with is that triangles are used to indicate "the highest note possible" on the instrument but I don't think you're using them in that way? The notes sounded pretty distinct to me in the performance rendering. Anyways - great music! Thanks for sharing! 1 Quote
Snake_Cake Posted May 15, 2021 Author Posted May 15, 2021 8 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said: Wow! This piece totally blew me away! Very nice job! I personally think your first foray into string quartet writing - the third movement - is the best (or at least my favorite). I am not even well versed enough in string quartet writing to know how to more critically examine this piece! Like for example - what do the arpeggios mean with the triangle notes? (I am not talking about the diamonds which indicate artificial harmonics) I tried looking it up and the only answer I can come up with is that triangles are used to indicate "the highest note possible" on the instrument but I don't think you're using them in that way? The notes sounded pretty distinct to me in the performance rendering. Anyways - great music! Thanks for sharing! Thanks! The triangular noteheads denote "orientative" pitches. This is done in places where I don't want to be splitting hairs because the exact note won't matter. For example, i use them for the end of a pizzicato glissando (the final note will barely be heard), and I also use them for the harmonic glissandi (where a major chord with a "neutral" 7th will be heard when the player lightly glides their finger up and down along the open string). There's a list of performance notes on the score, but I should've included them on the video too! Quote
Luis Hernández Posted May 15, 2021 Posted May 15, 2021 I love your language, in general. Vamos que me encanta que te metas en idiomas contemporáneos, más frescos. Congrats. 1 Quote
Snake_Cake Posted May 16, 2021 Author Posted May 16, 2021 18 hours ago, Luis Hernández said: I love your language, in general. Vamos que me encanta que te metas en idiomas contemporáneos, más frescos. Congrats. Gracias Luis! Ahora, en vez de imitar a compositores de hace 150 años, sólo imito a los de have 80 años 😂 1 Quote
Joshua Ng Posted May 21, 2021 Posted May 21, 2021 Really nice work! Your writing for strings feels very natural and conversational in nature, which is very very good for a string quartet. It is really a good effort for a string quartet. I think what you could try to do is to fragment the motif and really give it room to play around. Perhaps you could have included a few jazz references with the nice polyrhythms to add a little kick, but this is just my opinion as a suggestion. It is really splendid at its current form and I can really feel the Latin influences! You could also try perhaps inserting a tresillo rhythm too! 1 Quote
Snake_Cake Posted May 31, 2021 Author Posted May 31, 2021 On 5/21/2021 at 12:36 PM, Joshua Ng said: Really nice work! Your writing for strings feels very natural and conversational in nature, which is very very good for a string quartet. It is really a good effort for a string quartet. I think what you could try to do is to fragment the motif and really give it room to play around. Perhaps you could have included a few jazz references with the nice polyrhythms to add a little kick, but this is just my opinion as a suggestion. It is really splendid at its current form and I can really feel the Latin influences! You could also try perhaps inserting a tresillo rhythm too! Thanks! I'll admit there's not a lot of development in most places, I intended it to be a rather light piece. All the weight is in the finale, where there's every transformation imaginable: themes are fragmented, inverted diminuted... you name it. I actually use the tresillo quite a lot, it's some sort of borderline "tic" in my music. In this case I used it mostly in the first movement, even though the finale has some allusions to it. Thank you for listening 🙂 1 Quote
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