String Quartet Sonata

Hey all,

This is a piece I've spent many hours on, and I've tried my best to make it as interesting as possible.

In this piece I was mainly concerned about developing motifs, learning the Sonata form, and expanding my harmonic and modulatory(you know what I mean) vocabulary.

I've tried to be modern with the harmonic language, but it is not a very dissonant piece. It does change keys fairly rapidly in the development and much of my harmony and melody moves chromatically.

The development section is supposed to be fairly chaotic and episodic and then return to the more stable exposition/recapitulation.

Piece

Thank you,
Chris

I edited this some, and posted the updated score and mp3.

Hmm... the audio representation is ... okay. I feel like my impression is impacted by this, but here goes...

I liked the themes/motifs you used, they were each quite cool and it was very obvious which ones you were using at what time. I think you did an okay job with the developing, it was nothing special, but it was still good. What I'm trying to say, it although you did well with it, it didn't hold my attention well. Of course, again, I'm worried that I may think this because the mp3 was kind of icky, articulation was really not-crisp, if you know what I mean. I can see this as a backdrop to a silent moving picture (not necessarily a movie, per se, but something film-wise)... it even sounds rather reminiscent of old silent film scores, which I usually enjoy.

The ending I did not like... I feel that you need to find a better way to land in that final key, as it is, it sounds unresolved to me. Unresolved endings have their place and specific use, but this does not seem to me a very good example of such an employment.

I think you are doing well with this expansion of harmonic language... I'm not familiar with your style, so I can't comment personally, but I can say that this piece held together very well, even if there were some parts I would have changed in just the slightest and others that began to lose my attention, which brings me to my last words. Your work on developments seems fine enough, but work on making it more interesting, more varied, maybe try putting all the the main motives together in the same phrases to build depth and intensity, it also helps bring the individual motifs together and let them work with each other.

One final note: String instruments are capable of an almost endless variety of tone colours and styles of articulation, don't be afraid to employ them. If you know little of them, consult a local string expert, you can learn a lot and use that knowledge to aid you in your compositions, making them all the more enjoyable to hear and play.

Cheers.

Monkey

This is pretty good. It could use some variations in texture though. Some pizz would be nice.

In a number of spots though the Vibrato does not sound real at all. I don't use Finale so can't help you there.

Keep it up.

Ron

Well monkey, listening to your piece, overall it's good. Don't hate me monkey for i know i couldn't do better =D but I just found at times it seemed a little repetitive. It could be because i'm coming from the world of rock and roll/heavy metal and my ear isn't used to long pieces of purely chamber music, but there might of been a few times where my interests diminished slightly. By no means am i saying this is a bad piece, it was quite good actually, perhaps you could variate the motifs differently every so often? Maybe through in some pizzicato perhaps somewhere, spice it up a little.

And as i've stated before, this could be simply because i'm coming from the world of heavy metal/ rock and roll. Perhaps my ear isn't trained for such a musical piece quite yet, but overall very very very nice work.

Don't hate me monkey! XD. I'm going to log off for tonight, talk to you later man.

Thank you all for your reviews. I have made some changes in terms of texture, and hopefully this will make some of the sections more interesting. I will post the new version shortly (when I am at my computer).

Classical.Rocker, I don't hate you. Criticism is what I was seeking when I posted this piece, it is the only way to get better. Thank you.

I remember this! I like the faster tempo.