The eye

A 7 minute long String quartet of mine, my first compsition of anything more that 40 measures, to boot!

rain.MUS

The score of this piece doesn't seem finished so the music hasn't developed its full potential.

For example, looking at the score, there aren't any "hairpins" to indicate crescendo/decrescendo nor are there any bowing slurs. Putting these in will help bring out your ideas and add impact to the piece. Also some gradual tempo changes, rit. and accel. would help in the same way.

The tonal colour is fairly constant throughout the piece as most of the time all four instruments are playing - more variety would help add interest by having longer sections with fewer instruments. I was listening to some sections with one or two instruments muted and there are some good ideas that get obscured with all four playing.

It's hard to say how this piece would sound given some fine tuning - at the moment it has possibilities but doesn't grab one's interest for the whole 7 minutes.

It could do with some tweaking. There are points in the piece where every instrument is playing crotchets. Make the piece more polyphonic where possible. It also seems a bit jumpy. It seems when one instrument changes, everything changes with it. You don't need to have every instrument playing at all times. This can be ineffectual - you need more of a build-up to your volume changes and tempo changes I reckon. Not only that, it doesn't sound as if it ends properly. I have to agree with Euler, it does tend to drag on.

I do, however, like the beginning of the piece, and depending on what the imagery in this piece is, you could try and expand upon it. I'm talking mostly before the key change at bar 29. But it does need touching up in places.

this might put a bit of perspective on the end: it's retrograde. It doesn't seem to end naturally because I end in a natural minor, and the last chord is a really complex resolution that isn't ever supposed to actually resolve. That's just me being annoying. It's an inverted "tonic" of the natural minor, yet the C is sustained while the others cut out. when i was composing the end section i was playing with musical psychology. as for the boring bit, well i don't feel as though it's too boring until you hit the chorale, which is a bit... boring. While i was composing it i was more playing with techniques than thinking of any practical application.

A lot of times, when I've composed something for my opwn ammusement (like this composition) I'll go back and steal themes and ideas from it for later works that I deem a bit more serious. If you had a choice, what one

theme or idea should I steal for an orchestral work?

(the orchestral piece I'm working on right now is entitled "Sanity's Eclipse" and will be posted as soon as I've made any significant progress)