String Quartet in d minor. 1 Allegro Moderato

Hello! I've tried to write this a little more freely than usual: you'll see the ripresa of the first theme is shortened and the codette at the end of the recapitulation are rhythmically similar but not matching those at the end of the exposition. I thought it worked better this way, looking forward to your comments. Also, I've tried to write this more quickly than my typical glacial pace, and I would be delighted to make substantial changes after your expert and welcome advice! It's really great to be part of this forum.quartetto 1 - Full Score.pdf

Hi @Giacomo925,

On 3/20/2023 at 12:26 AM, Giacomo925 said:

you'll see the ripresa of the first theme is shortened and the codette at the end of the recapitulation are rhythmically similar but not matching those at the end of the exposition. I thought it worked better this way, looking forward to your comments.

Actually an exact recap. is not necessary as we have seen in lots of Haydn's works the themes in the 2nd subject are re-invented to fit for the arrival of the tonic key. I myself don't like an exact copy and paste as well unless I feel like that's the best way!

For me the style of this piece is quite neo-classical: The grammar, phrase structure, mood is classical but with more advanced harmonic chords and progression.

The development is great harmonically and your harmonic progression and modulations are mature and effective. I love how you use the new theme in the section and having counterpoints with it, and the interactions and voice change is great. I hope there are material from the exposition as well! Maybe forming a counterpoint using the new theme and the themes from the exposition will be great! The material from the first subject appears in b.72 which is already the close of the development and I hope it appears earlier!

The conflict between between Bb and B natural in b.109 and 110 is too strong for me even though I know you are adapting the melodic and harmonic minor at the same time. I may only use the descending scale of the melodic minor in the 2nd violin for this case.

A ritenuto at the end will be better than the rit. since this may cause confusion with ritardando (by careless readers!) (Or it's that a ritardando?)

Thanks for sharing and hope to see later movements!

Henry

Hi @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, thank you as usual for your supergenerous comments!

On 3/21/2023 at 2:03 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

The development is great harmonically and your harmonic progression and modulations are mature and effective. I love how you use the new theme in the section and having counterpoints with it, and the interactions and voice change is great. I hope there are material from the exposition as well! Maybe forming a counterpoint using the new theme and the themes from the exposition will be great! The material from the first subject appears in b.72 which is already the close of the development and I hope it appears earlier!

I have tried to add a bit to the development implementing your suggestion, what do you think? (also corrected the ugly mistake at b. 109-110, thank you!)

I also have completed the second movement (I'll do a separate thread), which I think could use some serious advice, especially in the middle section!quartetto 1 - Full Score.pdf

Hi @Giacomo925,

First I like how you add the dynamic markings and the details!

10 hours ago, Giacomo925 said:

I have tried to add a bit to the development implementing your suggestion, what do you think?

Obviously I like how you add the materials from the main theme into the development earlier, alongside with the new theme! Maybe it can be longer but that's personal since I LOVE extending haha!

Thanks for your update and I am checking your second movement!

Henry

Hi, Giacomo.

On 3/21/2023 at 2:03 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

For me the style of this piece is quite neo-classical: The grammar, phrase structure, mood is classical but with more advanced harmonic chords and progression.

I would agree with this generally; the more the piece advances, at least up to the re-exposition and specially in the section starting at 50, the further it goes from the usual harmony shown in the prior passages. What does seem to be a constant here is the question-answer passages that stain the majority of the piece for its own good in the majority of cases, but I don't think this kind of feedback is what you're looking for so I'm going to try diving a bit deeper.

• After a 3rd listening (of the most up to date version of your piece you brought to us), I noticed that the "crescendo" you do from M68 to the beginning of M72 felt unsolved in the lower voices (image of how I view it below the whole text), so I thought that extending the off-beat to that measure and resolving it at the same beat the decrescendo from fortississimo to forte begins in the first violin might be a good approach towards making clear that this section featuring strong "fake resolutions" —one at M67, off-beat; another one at M69, off-beat too— is over and the more fluid passages that come afterwards take control of the piece for a while.

• As a recommendation that I applied to myself regarding engraving, and which was recommended by some teachers of mine, try to compress silences where they not be meaningful or useful for reading. For example, look at Vc. part in M78,79 and 80. There are many more like these throughout the piece, which suggest me loads of try & error made —and thus, that this piece might be everything but effortless, which I highly value— cause these uncompressed silences are often left by the notation software after modifying/erasing/adding stuff.

In order to not make this denser, I'll stop here and give some more superficial opinions.

• My favourite parts were the exposition (the whole, up to M50) and the passage that goes from M86 to M92. The ending section was also good but not as good as the beginning and the aforementioned section.

• The 4-5 bars preceding M86 didn't convince me too much, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps because you reached fortissimo too soon: already in M80 we have forte but the music seems to be building up tension from that point till M82, hence I would say the dynamics don't exactly match with the intention... Perhaps I would have begun a bit less loud so the point of maximum tension is successfully reached and better noticed when the last legato [M83B3 to M85B4] and only it hold the maximum loudness in comparison with the preceding two. But perhaps not, again I'm not sure :B.

All in all, a very enjoyable work (for me, specially in the parts I mentioned).

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.
 

22 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Hi, Giacomo.

I would agree with this generally; the more the piece advances, at least up to the re-exposition and specially in the section starting at 50, the further it goes from the usual harmony shown in the prior passages. What does seem to be a constant here is the question-answer passages that stain the majority of the piece for its own good in the majority of cases, but I don't think this kind of feedback is what you're looking for so I'm going to try diving a bit deeper.

 

All feedback is good feedback! In fact, I'm curious as to what you mean exactly/how do you think one can mitigate (if possible) the problem re question-answer passages. Also, do you think after 50 it strays too much away from "safe" harmonic passages?

22 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

• After a 3rd listening (of the most up to date version of your piece you brought to us), I noticed that the "crescendo" you do from M68 to the beginning of M72 felt unsolved in the lower voices (image of how I view it below the whole text), so I thought that extending the off-beat to that measure and resolving it at the same beat the decrescendo from fortississimo to forte begins in the first violin might be a good approach towards making clear that this section featuring strong "fake resolutions" —one at M67, off-beat; another one at M69, off-beat too— is over and the more fluid passages that come afterwards take control of the piece for a while.

This is very good, makes a lot of sense and I'll try and change the current version in this direction. I don't necessarily mind the lack of climax in the lower lines, but I want to write one and see which one sounds better to me because it sounds like a very good suggestion. In general I agree that the development section is a bit disorderly and could profit from polishing/streamlining.

22 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

• As a recommendation that I applied to myself regarding engraving, and which was recommended by some teachers of mine, try to compress silences where they not be meaningful or useful for reading. For example, look at Vc. part in M78,79 and 80. There are many more like these throughout the piece, which suggest me loads of try & error made —and thus, that this piece might be everything but effortless, which I highly value— cause these uncompressed silences are often left by the notation software after modifying/erasing/adding stuff.

 

Yes, will do and yes, there's a lot of trial and error going on 🙂

Thanks VERY MUCH for your time and feedback, it's really appreciated and I'll try to put it to good use!

33 minutes ago, Giacomo925 said:

Also, do you think after 50 it strays too much away from "safe" harmonic passages?

Lemme listen to it again and I'll try to work out on a reply to the Q&A stuff. For this question though, the problem might not be that it goes too far, but that it goes far too quickly unintentionally. Logically, the more spice you add, the more combinations arise. I can see there's an intention of going away from the "safe" harmony, but this is done through a not so convincing way for me, it might be cause the leading voice that goes out of the harmony first seems to be below the usual leading voice and does it through a scale, but that could work if it were more established in the preceding sections. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you start going away from the usual harmony, you do it harmonically, rhythmically and melodically at the same time. That creates a rather strong contrast that in conjunction with the feeling of completeness the first 50 bars give alone, gives one the sensation that he's listening to something kind of unrelated with the material developed prior to that. Thus, my suggestion in this case would be taking a slower pace in diverging from the usual harmony using a larger chunk of the material you presented early in the piece as a trampoline. It might work, it might not, whatever you do is fine as long as you get increasingly satisfied with the result.

The majority of the Q&A passages are decent enough, good, or pleasant (specially the ones you subtly add in the first 50 measures). You just have to do what you did there, which is, I suppose, intertwine voices more daringly: 
Here is where I find the least convincing section. These four bars have probably much room for improvement, as they're not only the focus of this paragraph but of the prior one. You can see how right now, the Q&A structure is almost vertical, there's no blending between the voices and in this case, this doesn't work (to me). My suggestion here would be trying to make this passage more "diagonal" and subtle. More: you are starting a new section after a solid pause in M49, so perhaps forte isn't the right choice (just brainstorming here) and in fact, you have then this phrase
() which gets blurred because everything is forte (or at least I'd say this is one of the reasons behind I hear it that way, apart from the register). Try to find a more balanced approach in the dynamics and this section might improve a lot (or not, but then you'll only need to revert the changes :B).
 

33 minutes ago, Giacomo925 said:

Yes, will do and yes, there's a lot of trial and error going on 🙂

I believe this is the way 😎, let's see what you come up with in this and next works.

Kind regards!!