Air for oboe & strings

Here my new baroque piece.

It's arranged for oboe and string quartet, but since string quartet was first used in the classical period as a chamber arrangement, I named it Air for oboe & strings. 

The Melody is clearly on the oboe, cello plays the baseline and some countermelodies. The 2 violins and the viola play basically an staccato accompaniment all through the piece. 

Edited January 19, 20206 yr by Guillem82

Not bad at all. A very relaxing texture. I especially enjoyed the chromatic interplay between the cello and oboe. Nicely done. My only critique would be to remove the trill in the oboe at the end. Perhaps place it on the leading tone (which was often the case anyways). Ironically, I didn't feel this was baroque -reminded me very much of some of Mozart's slow movements. 

Thanks for you feedback @jawoodruff! I will check to replace the tonic G for the leading tone F# as an apoyatura before the resolution. Probably changing some of the middle voices, since it will be an apoyatura on the tonic chord, very typical on baroque and classic music. Nice idea, thanks!

Edited January 21, 20206 yr by Guillem82

Yes, it's very nice. I think the feeling is more classical because the strings (except in some spots) are not doing counterpoint, which is more frequent in baroque.

Hi Lluis, thanks for posting!

You are probably right, it sounds more classical :)

I composed the oboe melody about 15 years ago. The original accompaniment consist basically of static chords in quarter notes for organ, which sounded more baroque to me. The original key signature was Dm, which was awful tonality for oboe (obviously I had no experience by then).

I reviewed the piece last week, giving more dynamic texture and more interesting baseline, so it sounds more classical. I also changed the key to Gm, which fits much better with the instruments register and add some melodic embelishment (original melody had no sexteennotes and no trills, and the tempo was a bit slower). To be honest, it sounded a bit boring and with lack of flow...it just needed some work here and there.

Edited January 24, 20206 yr by Guillem82