String Quartet, Op. 1

[krummholz]

As some may have noticed, I've been having a lot of trouble writing anything new for the last couple of years. Some of the problem is work-related, some is just me. Anyway I decided to revisit my Op. 1, a string quartet that I began as a student at Michigan decades ago and finished in 2020. I tweaked the articulation, dynamics, and timing of entrances and phrase-ends and I really like the result now. A link to the latest MIDI rendering is below; the score is a mess so I'm not posting it for now. It's in a late Romantic idiom but is extremely chromatic, hovering on the brink of atonality and occasionally going over it. It plays about 15:30.

Edit: I've cleaned up the score enough to post it, and futzed a little with tempi and durations so the rendering is a new one too - though the differences are really things only the composer would notice.

Audio file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lR9_87Jem0H-UybIroPB3zqYotZyD7Ru/view?usp=share_link

Score used for rendering:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y-wQaVVQVRUPy9pzNEmcmOBouwR2s8NO/view?usp=share_link

Some of the cello double stops in the second subject are likely unplayable. I'm willing to work with any interested cellist to find a way to make them playable.

[relm1]

I enjoyed it, nice balance of tension and reflection.  The solemn ending was beautiful!

[krummholz]

I enjoyed it, nice balance of tension and reflection.  The solemn ending was beautiful!

Thank you, much appreciated!

[Crudblud]

A skilful take on the early Second Viennese School sound. Well done.

[krummholz]

A skilful take on the early Second Viennese School sound. Well done.

Interestingly enough, at the time I began the work many years ago, I had really very little exposure to Schoenberg / Berg / Webern, and my actual inspiration was Bartok. Yet, my professor at the time (Albright) said that it struck him as rather Bergian. It wasn't until I actually heard the sketch rendered in MuseScore that I understood what he meant. Finishing it up in 2020, that style was very much in mind of course - though more Schoenberg than Berg, I think.

In any case, thank you for listening and for your comment!

[Karl Henning]

I'll listen this week. I remember much enjoying the older draught. Looking forward to the refresh!

[krummholz]

The score is up now in the OP.

[krummholz]

I just revisited my original sketch (on paper and in Musescore) for comparison with the finished piece and have to say that I am very pleased with how this turned out. Up through m. 112 I made very few changes from the sketch - slight modifications of harmony or dynamics, an added scale fragment here and there, but mostly it's the same piece. From m. 113 on everything in the sketch was downright inchoate and had to be either recomposed or replaced entirely, and most of it is new stuff that I would never have thought of back in 1975. The only things that I kept were the first violin's intense solo at the climax (m. 136 to letter J) and the tutti pizzicato passage just before letter P, but their contexts are totally different from before. Today I can't imagine what follows m. 112 as unfolding any other way. Funny how the mind works...

[Karl Henning]

Nice!

[lunar22]

as I said elsewhere, this is a powerful and interesting work which deserves more than one listening. Particularly like the climax around bar 136.