Arco Ostinato

Hello!  I've been busy trying to complete some old pieces in between the new compositions I submit on here.  So this is a piece I started a long time ago but only now managed to finish (although I fussed around with the ending quite a bit until I felt I had gotten it right).  This is a rondo form which goes through like, four iterations of both a slow and a fast theme (the cellos' eponymous "arco ostinato") - both of which I intended to be based around basically the same melodic material.  Each new iteration has a few new details added here and there and the slow parts are always in a different tonality so hopefully it doesn't bore you!  The original idea behind the piece was to write a piece using quartal harmonies that nonetheless stays tonal and mostly triadic.  Let me know what you think!  The rendition is done with Musescore since I don't yet have any solo strings VST's.  Thanks for listening!

What to say! This is an idiom more or less alien to me so I won't have much constructive criticism coming. I can say that the 'piece' is entertaining and comical in places, particularly the glissando's, which perhaps due to the playback quality sound rather cheesy! But that adds a nice affect and I think is intentional on your part.

I enjoyed the contrast you provide between the ostinato sections and with the slower ones. The mood that I am feeling from the music seems rather akin to one's experience of bipolar personality disorder!

Thank you for sharing and brightening my morning

Such an interesting piece, and very effectively arranged for string quartet, I might add! The harmonic texture here was richly quartal — so much so, in fact, that I would consider doing away with key signatures in this piece. With so many accidentals already, having to remember which notes are sharped or flatted based on an arbitrary key doesn't help your performers.

I also noticed that you stuck mostly with p4/p4 chords. Nothing wrong with that as it provides a nice consonance while preserving that quartal 'edge' and, I believe, worked well here. You might, however, think about exploring the sounds of other quartal/quintal species, particularly those with aug4/dim5 intervals. That's one of the beauties of quartal harmony: the ability to expand or retract harmonic dissonance by tinkering with the interval of the 4th.

Which brings me to my next point of consideration. If you're going to use quartal harmonies, it might be useful to plan out your harmonic progressions. Quartals in any given key inherently do away with the triadic degrees of the key, and thus there won't be harmonic cadences. Musical phrasing must be achieved via other methods (which you pulled off quite well in this piece) and yet, by the same token, moving from one tonal center to the next becomes far more fluid. It's easy to get lost when using quartal harmonies; hence, a tonal 'map' tends to help out a great deal. (Not saying your piece suffered from this. Just wanted to provide a bit of advice in case you weren't aware.)

From a notation perspective, there were a couple of things to look at. First, slurs. Take a look at this one from the 1st violin at mm. 52-54:

The way this is notated, it would appear you really just want one big slur from that A to the final F. I assume you meant for the bowing to stop at the E and resume at the D, but that's not the way it's notated. There are also issues of competing ties and slurs, as in these bars:

It's conventional to extend the slur to the end of the tied note, provides a cleaner look. Someone correct me if I'm wrong... I seem to recall that that convention is dying away.

Lastly, there is the issue of unprovided dynamics between hairpin swells, as below (and above also, incidentally):

It's implied that the start of that C will be at the previously supplied dynamic, which is fine. The A-sharp will be played forte, which is also fine. But what about in between, where the closing and opening hairpins meet? Just a quick p or mp is all it takes, and it will mean the world to your performers.

Okay, I think that's enough for now. This is a marvelous piece and I'm glad you shared it with us! Keep up the good work!

On 7/1/2022 at 2:47 AM, Markus Boyd said:

I can say that the 'piece' is entertaining and comical in places, particularly the glissando's, which perhaps due to the playback quality sound rather cheesy! But that adds a nice affect and I think is intentional on your part.

Yeah I do realize the glissando's are cheesy but I'm hoping that in an actual performance it would be perceived more as a virtuosic showmanship since nearly all the glissando's move up to a double stop which I suspect is not the easiest thing to execute.  I would actually appreciate any feedback from anybody that does play violin about the relative difficulty of said glissando's.

On 7/1/2022 at 2:47 AM, Markus Boyd said:

I enjoyed the contrast you provide between the ostinato sections and with the slower ones. The mood that I am feeling from the music seems rather akin to one's experience of bipolar personality disorder!

LoL - I assure you that was unintended.  I guess that's because the ostinato sections are mostly in major modes while the slow parts are mostly in minor.

On 7/1/2022 at 2:47 AM, Markus Boyd said:

Thank you for sharing and brightening my morning

Thanks for listening and for your feedback!

On 7/1/2022 at 7:43 AM, Tónskáld said:

Such an interesting piece, and very effectively arranged for string quartet, I might add! The harmonic texture here was richly quartal — so much so, in fact, that I would consider doing away with key signatures in this piece. With so many accidentals already, having to remember which notes are sharped or flatted based on an arbitrary key doesn't help your performers.

Thanks for the compliment!  About the key signature - I mostly used it in this piece to cut down on some of my work with making sure that the trills were executed between the right accidentals.  Technically the piece is in F# major since the ostinato, main theme, and ending are in F# major.

On 7/1/2022 at 7:43 AM, Tónskáld said:

From a notation perspective, there were a couple of things to look at. First, slurs. Take a look at this one from the 1st violin at mm. 52-54:

The way this is notated, it would appear you really just want one big slur from that A to the final F. I assume you meant for the bowing to stop at the E and resume at the D, but that's not the way it's notated.

In this case I intended there to be a change in the bowing direction at the E (so assuming the A and the C natural are an upbow, I'd like the E and D to be a downbow).

On 7/1/2022 at 7:43 AM, Tónskáld said:

Lastly, there is the issue of unprovided dynamics between hairpin swells, as below (and above also, incidentally):

It's implied that the start of that C will be at the previously supplied dynamic, which is fine. The A-sharp will be played forte, which is also fine. But what about in between, where the closing and opening hairpins meet? Just a quick p or mp is all it takes, and it will mean the world to your performers.

I actually did include a dynamic in between those hairpins in the original Musescore file.  In the program those measures look like this:

I had to add two hidden, unplayed notes in an unused voice for the hairpin and pp dynamic to have a target to be placed at.  I also left the pp dynamic hidden because I thought it was self-explanatory that C# should start forte and drop down to a dynamic out of the foreground and then back up.  I actually would have preferred to use a sforzando-piano marking at that spot but Musescore unfortunately does not perform sfzp the way that I intended it to sound so writing in my own diminuendos and crescendos was needed.

Thanks for your informed remarks and for listening!  And thank you for your comments about the slurs - that is definitely something I will pay more attention to in the future.

Yo Papa Peter,

I am going to dig this one out since we have talked about it before!

First of all I love the fast section full of ostinato which gives the name to the piece. The energy in it, or in your music in general always reminds me of Haydn. Haydn faced a tough childhood and in his twenties but he always faced it with humour and energy. I think your music definitely shows the same quality too!! Nice use of quartal harmony to give the fleeing and joking mood here. Key changing like from b.32 to 33 is very funny yet crafty. The middle slow choral section provides good contrast as well, even though I feel like the contrast is too big haha! And the glissando, WTF! So funny especially with the computer rendition! Even if you don’t like Bartok, it really reminds me his String Quartet with the message like the pizz. movement of his String Quartet no.4, just face the suffering and play with it! I know I am trolling but thx for sharing!

Henry