A Completed Movement

Most of the work on the Moderato movement of a string quartet in D minor was finished back in January, but I left it to age in the mind for a while. Today, I posted the score at Finale Showcase, though it probably won't be visible until Monday or Tuesday. An MP3, performed by the resident computer quartet, can be found here.

1st Movement Sketched

Back to the string quartet last seen three posts and seven months ago.

A transition has been added to the first subject that takes its lead from the eighth-note figure in the viola:



The transition rises to the 2nd subject, in A major, which includes some chromatic passages borrowed and modified from the beginning:



There is no coda before, as originally intended. Maybe I’ll insert one later, maybe not. It sounds to my ear a bit out of balance, but that is not necessarily bad.

The development works on the 1st subject, starting with the viola and the first two bars in a minor. The 1st violin throws in its four pieces of eight as comments, causing the viola to change its tune, then everyone chimes in until the viola wraps up the section with the 2nd bar.



The 2nd violin takes the 2nd bar to C major and noodles its way to the third bar with some echoes from the first fiddle.



Then the cello takes over, putting the 3rd bar into G major with some conviction, which the 1st violin softly echoes on high, from which everyone tumbles down



to the viola and the 4th and 5th bars in D major. The viola then launches into some noodling of its own for a short trip to b minor and a handoff to the 2nd violin.



The 2nd violin decides there has been enough noodles of late and takes bars 5 and 6 from the 1st subject and spins some variants:



The cello likes that idea and takes the 6th bar, now in f# minor, tosses it around on the way to the 7th bar.



The 1st violin, having allowed the others to dominate the development, states the opening chromatic figure on A major, passes it to the cello, who hands off to the 2nd fiddle, who returns the passage to the 1st to complete a dominant seventh and start the recap.

Thematic Material

The first subject uses two strings of notes:


and


I interleaved the two sets and fiddled with the octaves to get this:


Adjusting the rhythm to something more interesting produced these two and a half bars:


Overlapping on the b-flat, the next three bars place the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th notes of the interleaved string at the beginning of each bar:


Two extension bars follow, ending with A – D – B – E straight from the string:


The whole is thus:


For harmonization, I borrowed La Folia’s base line, transposed to D


resulting in this straight-forward opening:


The cello overlaps a repetition of the theme, passes it to the viola, who passes it up to the second violin, then returns it to the viola, all without commentary (that will come later):

String Quartet in D Minor – The Plan

This will be in three movements, the first in sonata form. The first subject thematic material will do the usual tonic to dominant, followed be an unstable transition more or less in or on the dominant. Also, the second subject material will be, as usual, in the dominant, with a short coda to bridge to the development. The development will be based either on the first subject alone or in combination with new themes; the second subject won’t show up.

The second subject won’t appear in the recapitulation either. After the first subject, there will be a stable transition to an expanded version of the exposition’s coda.

The second movement will be either ternary or rondo form, with the “A” section being a variation of the first subject. The contrasting section (or sections) will need to be completely new thematic material, or at least sound completely new.

The final movement will also be in sonata form, with its first subject being a variation of the original first subject, making the whole work a kind of variation on a theme and variations form. The second subject reappears for the first time since the opening movement, more or less intact. Towards the end of the development, the first subject will appear on the tonic as a false recapitulation while the real recap will ignore the first subject all together. The second subject finally gets its time in the tonic, and a coda will probably wrap things up.