String Quartet (1st movement only)

• Why don't the viola and violin II have each other's parts, in bars 3-4? The way it is now, you have a crossing with a leap of a tritone in the viola, for no reason that I can see.
  
• What about an attack on the second beat of 4, to be consistent with 3?
  
• I ain't got me no brainsmarts, so I can't remember all my fancy music words, but, essentially, I didn't like the second phrase of the first period. Starting off like it does, it sounds like it's going to be one of the ones that's different than the first phrase (I could definitely look up the terminology; but I could definitely not), but it isn't, which seems kinda weak.
  
• I'm not sure why you didn't let the first violin go down to a D in 8. I could be wrong in thinking of it like this, but, the way I figures it, it's actually going to be some guy or gal playing that part, so better to let them end the phrase themselves, as well as with the others, so the part itself sounds complete.
  
• 6/4 in 13, beat 1?
  
• 6/4 in 18, beat 3?
  
• No third in 31.
  
• Last beat of 39?

That's all for now. I'll be back, maybe probably.

Hi,

So I can see this is very much in your style of extremely idiomatic late-classical writing with a few dissonances thrown in at certain spots. The theme isn't very classical sounding by itself, but you developed it like it was and you developed it very well, so good job for that. I only have 2 complaints with the exposition. The first is measure 20, you have a very interesting chord that wasn't prepared as well as I thought it could have been. The viola is implying a different harmony than the cello and that is implying something different from the violin. So the dissonance in that measure feels forced and out of place. From measure 46 to measure 47, I thought that that section felt a little underprepared. It didn't sound like it fit properly. This is of course in comparison to everything else, which is quite nice.

The development was nice; it was developed exactly as I would expect it to be. The recapitulation was also very nice and I like how you modified the bridge. As for the orchestration/voicing of the ensemble, I felt like it wasn't very conversational most of the time, which is fine given the time period, but that's something I would have really liked to see in terms of a string quartet. By conversational, I don't necessarily mean polyphonic, but having singing lines in one instrument, and then another comes and interjects, and another one finishes the idea, etc. The beauty of the string quartet is the homogeneity of sound between the strings so ideas can be passed seamlessly between them.

Finally, on the note of the dissonances, I remember talking to you about this on your piano sonata; it's fine to have dissonance obviously, as it is the most integral part of musical form, but I think some of your dissonances verge on harmonic confusion, such as in measure 20. All it would really take is some polish to retain that sound, but remove the harmonic confusion and not make the listener pause to wonder what just happened.

Really good work