Three Sententiae for String Quartet, Op. 376

This is my "Three Sententiae for String Quartet, Op. 376". The first sententia is subtitled "A Reflection on Beethoven's Op. 131 String Quartet's Opening Fugue", a piece that I consider the greatest string quartet ever composed, perhaps even the greatest music ever composed. The subtitle comes from the fact that I was wondering about that composition's first movement and thinking that it is a piece that is so great that it deserves musical reflections by other composers being done on it, when this "reflection" occurred to me.

This set of sententiae is my 9th set of sententiae composed for string quartet, and my 66th set of sententiae overall (albeit two of those "sets" comprise only one sententia). The third sententia, at over a minute long, is unusually long and stretches the usual boundaries of a sententia. I have provided a description of the sententia, a form I have created, in the title page of the score. I reproduce it below:

The 'sententia' is a musical form I originated in 2013. The word 'sententia' (plural: ‎‎'sententiae') is the Latin for the word 'sentence'. The Oxford dictionary defines 'sententia' ‎as "A pithy or memorable saying, a maxim, an aphorism, an epigram; a thought, a ‎reflection."For me a 'sententia' is a musical utterance of a thought that is complete in ‎itself, like a sentence. It is also an utterance that finds no need for any elaboration or ‎development. Hence my sententiae are short pieces that come in sets and are often related ‎to each other in some way. Just like between the movements of a multi-movement piece, ‎I would expect that performers observe a short pause between one sententia and the next. ‎And I would expect that there be no clapping from audiences between sententiae.‎

Here is the link of the previous set of sententiae for string quartet that I have posted on YC (it is the one before my Three Sententiae for String Quartet Op. 346" that isn't posted here):

https://www.youngcomposers.com/t36832/two-sententiae-for-string-quartet-op-311/

Edit: I found I had later posted another set of sententiae for string quartet, my Op. 321. Here is the link:

https://www.youngcomposers.com/t37957/two-sententiae-for-string-quartet-op-321/

Hello

There is no doubt, at least for those of us who have been here for a while, that you have created a sound world of your own with this format.

In this case I really liked the second and third pieces. The second has a rather nostalgic feel to it.

The first one, from my point of view, suffers from one thing and that is the second violin in pizzicato. Perhaps your intention was to create a timbral filling, more percussive. But it is very much masked by the rest of the voices because on the one hand it is an intermediate voice, on the other hand, many notes coincide with the others rhythmically.

4 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

Hello

There is no doubt, at least for those of us who have been here for a while, that you have created a sound world of your own with this format.

In this case I really liked the second and third pieces. The second has a rather nostalgic feel to it.

The first one, from my point of view, suffers from one thing and that is the second violin in pizzicato. Perhaps your intention was to create a timbral filling, more percussive. But it is very much masked by the rest of the voices because on the one hand it is an intermediate voice, on the other hand, many notes coincide with the others rhythmically.

 

 

Thank you Luis for your valuable review and comments. It is great and gratifying to hear your opinion that I have created "a sound world of [my] own" in the format of the sententia. 

Regarding your review of the piece, I agree that the 2nd and the 3rd sententiae have perhaps better succeeded at achieving their intention. And indeed perhaps the pizzicato of the first sententia's second violin does not fully succeed in achieving the intended effect, at least in the software rendition. It is always gratifying to hear feedback on one's pieces and I will take note of it in future compositions.