Serenade on an Early Theme

This submission has some history behind it. I got bored about three or four days ago and decided to look through some of my earlier works to see if I could rewrite anything; as it happened, I found a composition for string quartet from two years ago (marked my Op. 1, apparently) that I felt had some good thematic material, so I got to it. That old piece was my first IGCSE composition, from the start of the 9th grade. I've taken the liberty of uploading both pieces (the newer one as Op. 1a, though I hope you'd be able to gauge which one's the newer one 😉) so you can compare the two.

I'm pretty grateful to see how far I've gotten with my compositional skills, or even just my ability to write for strings. Let's hope this is a good sign (!).

As always, criticism is always welcome. 

P.S. If you couldn't tell, this was a bit of a rushed piece that I wanted to finish pretty quickly, so there will likely be some voice leading mistakes. Also, Musescore's solo strings playback sucks: I had to do a lot of manual adjustments to keep it from glissing or getting shaky bow (somehow???) or playing loud for no reason, so please bear with the piece if there's a phrasing mistake somewhere.

Hi @Awsumerguy,

The piece has some contemplative mood in it. It indeed contains some parallel 2nd like in the first few lines. The change to pizzicato in b.59 is quite nice, except I am not sure whether the triple stopping pizz for the 2nd violin will be hard to play or not since I don’t play the instrument. 

I think the op.1 one is quite good as your first composition. My first composition is sxxt compare to yours.

Thx for sharing!

Henry

On 11/11/2023 at 5:39 PM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

It indeed contains some parallel 2nd like in the first few lines. The change to pizzicato in b.59 is quite nice, except I am not sure whether the triple stopping pizz for the 2nd violin will be hard to play or not since I don’t play the instrument. 

Good to hear from you again, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu!

I'm not too sure about the parallel 2nds thing. I personally don't mind it too much; I was thinking there'd probably be more around the middle, since that's where the densest string writing lies in the piece. That being said, I'll consider making some changes if it does become noticeable to me. 

I think the pizz. should be playable, though I'm not sure if it'll be very difficult to play. I'll be honest and say I didn't consult a string ranges guide, but I think it should be playable on the lower 3 strings? (I might have to double check that later.)

On 11/11/2023 at 5:39 PM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I think the op.1 one is quite good as your first composition. My first composition is sxxt compare to yours.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm happy someone feels that way about my early works! I felt I've always been a little hard on myself when it comes to composing, so it's a relief to see my first works weren't total garbage to start with. That being said, that was the first piece I believed be worthy of being called a piece: there were crappier fragments that I worked on earlier (that I might even consider posting!)

Thank you for the nice reply! 😁

48 minutes ago, Awsumerguy said:

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm happy someone feels that way about my early works! I felt I've always been a little hard on myself when it comes to composing, so it's a relief to see my first works weren't total garbage to start with. That being said, that was the first piece I believed be worthy of being called a piece: there were crappier fragments that I worked on earlier (that I might even consider posting!)

Yeah I know the feeling very well. I just ike you have lots of unfinished works (you can see that in your look into my "about me" profile here!) And it's always happy you finally find a work worth to be called a work, in my case that solo piano work named ( ). I didn't even consider myself a composer until I finished my Clarinet Quintet and started to feel like I can indeed compose something.

Henry

2 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I didn't even consider myself a composer until I finished my Clarinet Quintet and started to feel like I can indeed compose something.

That's really sad...

Thank goodness you got out of that headspace though, otherwise we wouldn't be able to hear more of your great music! 😀

10 hours ago, Awsumerguy said:

That's really sad...

Thx but actually that's not quite sad for me haha, since I feel like by being a composer you have great responsibilities to bear. At least you have to ensure that your works won't be trash, you really have something unique to express which can only be expressed in the medium of music, you have to improve in every pieces and look into all those details and decide. I feel happy when I feel like composing is a very difficult challenge to take, since easy things don't worth much.