Lamentations in d-minor

Hello! It's been quite awhile since I've posted anything, so I figured I'd give this a post. This was written for my high school's string quartet with the addition of a bass. It took me about a day of writing and a week of intermittent revisions, all done in Sibelius. It was written at the news of the death of a friend of mine, Gary Bloom. It had initially started off as a theme and variations on the bass line and evolved from there. I'm really looking forward to getting some critique on this piece.

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I like the harmonic language a lot in this piece, and I definitely liked your contrapuntal approach (especially the suspensions). The only thing I found disappointing was the end, especially that Picardy 3rd. It just seems to end abruptly. I don't know how you the ACTUAL string quartet play it, but a slowing off towards the end (perhaps with some motion in the bass line) and perhaps ending on an unresolved dissonance for your final chord well help this piece be even more effective than it already is. Good job.

By the way, how did you get the solo string sound, I use Sibelius and I can't seem to do that. Maybe it's because I only have Kontakt Silver and not Gold...

A very fine piece which captures the intended mood excellently with its steady harmonic motion. Well done.

I thought the ending was fine - but I wonder if instead of the last D in the basso ostinato you couldn't repeat the opening 4 bars of it coming back to a whole note D while the upper parts hold their notes with a gradual diminuendo. Well, I thought the basso ostinato was superb and added a lot to the piece so repeating it at the end might work - just an idea - endings are always tricky.

Thanks for sharing this very enjoyable piece.

This piece conveys perfectly the 'lamentation'...reminded me a lot of Michael Nyman's work....

A delicious use of suspensions and the variations you used throughout the piece kept my interest until the end.

Some points, I find, were a bit unsuccessful. Sure, for example in m.18, the suspension doesn't create much of a problem theoretically (or, maybe, it does), but you end up with a nice d-e-f sounding together. And it shows in the sound, I feel unsuccessfully.

Also the score is in need of some attention.

Last, I agree with the previous reviewers...the ending wasn't very convincing...

Apart from these, a great work! One and a half thumb up!