String Quartet No. 1

I just thought I would add a little activity to this site by posting my latest rendering of an older work, my first (and so far only) string quartet, which I began as a student at Michigan in 1975 and finished, except for minor revisions, in 2020. It's a dissonant, rather Bergian work that drifts in and out of a kind of free atonality, though to my ears there are passing references to key centers everywhere, especially in the Tippett-like 3rd subject and in the newer material (roughly the second half) that was written with the benefit of notation software. It begins and ends in A minor, but very little of the piece is actually in that key, or even in any key. Toward the end the "Tippett" theme is, however, transformed into a lilting, and very diatonic, duet for the violins against a pizzicato accompaniment.

There are no changes to the actual notes since I last posted this work here, but numerous changes to phrasing, articulation, dynamics, and the lengths of fermatas and other pauses as I ported the score from Sibelius to Dorico earlier this month. This is basically the same rendering that I posted recently on a different site (GMG), except for shortening the caesura at letter K from 275% to 200%, which clips off a little less than a second from the rendering.

The score has not been proofread thoroughly; there may still be collisions and extraneous rests left over from Sibelius - the score was exported first to XML and then read by Dorico, which apparently doesn't do any cleanup during the import process - if my impression is correct, you have to edit a measure directly before it will consolidate rests there.

Comments are welcome.

Edit: about two weeks ago I bought a copy of the VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) Studio Solo Strings library and just finished "porting" this quartet to render in Dorico via that library. I think the sonics are better, and some parts are musically superior as well. I've included links to the new rendering and score below - there are very few changes in the score other than as needed to correct dynamic imbalances and some invisible ones, like the lengths of some of the pauses, but there is a biggie: from letter G to the first beat of m. 106, I had to swap the 2nd violin and viola parts because the VSL library doesn't have legato samples for the F6-E6-Eb6 triplet figure in m. 105. There are some glaring flaws, most notably a "whooping" effect in places where two notes connected by a slur are literally slurred together, but I think the superior sonics and the fact that the four instruments have very different, distinctive timbres in the VSL library more than compensate for those flaws. A comment below mentioned that in places the counterpoint disappears because of parallel motion - but that's allowed in counterpoint, and I think the real problem is that the two instruments have nearly identical timbres in NotePerformer, which was used for the first rendering.

The main changes to the *music* in this version have to do with the lengths of pauses, which I tried to tweak to reduce the "sectional" quality that the work can have if they're too long, as someone rightly pointed out below. Hopefully this version will be a little more convincing - if you can overlook the flaws in the rendering.

String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 1 (VSL Studio Solo Strings)

Score used for VSL version

The files below are the original ones that I posted here before adapting the work to VSL.

String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 1 (NotePerformer)

Score used for NP version

Hi Stephen,

I don't think it's TOO unusual for the climax of a piece to occur in the development, or at the very beginning of the recapitulation in a sonata form piece. That's what happens here, though it's intentionally unclear where the development ends and the recap begins - you're only really sure when the Allegretto severo returns. The unwinding and resolving of "loose ends" in the recap and coda don't reach any more imposing climaxes, but I don't see that as a flaw. YMMV. In this version I moved the cello rhythm from E on further into the background as I agree, it's not particularly interesting until it bursts in at F.

Reducing the number of section players in NP is done with a CC code, I forget offhand which one, but it's no more difficult in Dorico than in Sibelius. I used that feature extensively in my Sinfonia Solenne to create a small chamber subsection, but the number of players in each section was always 2 or 3, so I never heard what the single-player sound is like, after my early experiment. (There are also solo strings in SS, but I used NP's actual solo strings for that - maybe I should try replacing them with single-player "sections".)

One thing that NP can't give you, though, is a 2nd violin with a different tone than the 1st violin. ;) I think the distinguishability of the individual instruments is one of the strengths of my VSL rendering. With NP solo strings it isn't so much the coarseness of the sound that grates on me, it's the synthiness of it - it sounds electronic. NP's section strings, and all of their other instruments that I've heard, don't bother me much at all.

Small world re: your auditioning with Albright and Bassett. I never met Bassett at Michigan - when I was there he seemed to have stopped teaching the required courses, if he ever did, and I even thought at the time that he was retired. I studied theory, at least initially, under Wallace Berry, another excellent teacher who gave me a lot of encouragement since I tended to turn his theory assignments into little composition exercises. BTW the only two Tippett operas that I've heard are The Midsummer Marriage and The Knot Garden. Of the two, I thought Marriage was the stronger, as Garden was from his self-consciously modern and topical period. But given that he wrote his own librettos, I'm not surprised that his operas come across as childish. Even in Marriage, I sometimes cringe at the text. BTW a post-1965 work of his that I liked for a time was Vision of St. Augustine, but again, I had it only on LP and haven't heard the piece in decades.

Today my strongest influences are Holmboe, Havergal Brian, and Robert Simpson. I've only heard a couple of Per Norgard's shorter pieces (Whirl's World - or is it Whorl's World? - comes to mind) and need to investigate his output further, if I can hear it on a site that doesn't do compression or hit you with commercials every few minutes.

Replies

- Liz Atems > Stephen Ferre June 10, 2025 at 9:34pm
  
  Hi Stephen,
  
  I don't think it's TOO unusual for the climax of a piece to occur in the development, or at the very beginning of the recapitulation in a sonata form piece. That's what happens here, though it's intentionally unclear where the development ends and the recap begins - you're only really sure when the Allegretto severo returns. The unwinding and resolving of "loose ends" in the recap and coda don't reach any more imposing climaxes, but I don't see that as a flaw. YMMV. In this version I moved the cello rhythm from E on further into the background as I agree, it's not particularly interesting until it bursts in at F.
  
  Reducing the number of section players in NP is done with a CC code, I forget offhand which one, but it's no more difficult in Dorico than in Sibelius. I used that feature extensively in my Sinfonia Solenne to create a small chamber subsection, but the number of players in each section was always 2 or 3, so I never heard what the single-player sound is like, after my early experiment. (There are also solo strings in SS, but I used NP's actual solo strings for that - maybe I should try replacing them with single-player "sections".)
  
  One thing that NP can't give you, though, is a 2nd violin with a different tone than the 1st violin. ;) I think the distinguishability of the individual instruments is one of the strengths of my VSL rendering. With NP solo strings it isn't so much the coarseness of the sound that grates on me, it's the synthiness of it - it sounds electronic. NP's section strings, and all of their other instruments that I've heard, don't bother me much at all.
  
  Small world re: your auditioning with Albright and Bassett. I never met Bassett at Michigan - when I was there he seemed to have stopped teaching the required courses, if he ever did, and I even thought at the time that he was retired. I studied theory, at least initially, under Wallace Berry, another excellent teacher who gave me a lot of encouragement since I tended to turn his theory assignments into little composition exercises. BTW the only two Tippett operas that I've heard are The Midsummer Marriage and The Knot Garden. Of the two, I thought Marriage was the stronger, as Garden was from his self-consciously modern and topical period. But given that he wrote his own librettos, I'm not surprised that his operas come across as childish. Even in Marriage, I sometimes cringe at the text. BTW a post-1965 work of his that I liked for a time was Vision of St. Augustine, but again, I had it only on LP and haven't heard the piece in decades.
  
  Today my strongest influences are Holmboe, Havergal Brian, and Robert Simpson. I've only heard a couple of Per Norgard's shorter pieces (Whirl's World - or is it Whorl's World? - comes to mind) and need to investigate his output further, if I can hear it on a site that doesn't do compression or hit you with commercials every few minutes.
Liz Atems June 10, 2025 at 12:46pm

I just updated the OP with the new rendering and score, made with VSL Studio Solo Strings under Dorico.
- Stephen Ferre > Liz Atems June 10, 2025 at 1:26pm
  
  Actually, that sounds much better, and I'm not so put off by the section at E. Some of the cresc and dim don't sound natural at times, and there are a few places that sound electronic, but otherwise it is a significant improvement.
- Liz Atems > Stephen Ferre June 10, 2025 at 9:43pm
  
  There are definitely some things in this version that don't work well - for example, the viola's glissando in m. 36 is obviously a chromatic scale since I don't know how or if it's even possible to get a true glisssando out of the VSL library. And this viola is definitely wrong for the Allegretto severo reprise - too smooth and gentle. The attacks should be brusquer and more "severe", but I'm not sure which artic to use to indicate that. An accent doesn't do what I want, marcato isn't right either... it may just be the instrument, or the violist who created the samples. Anyway it sounds like we are on the same page about this version, thanks for taking the time to listen to my piece a second time.
- David > Liz Atems June 11, 2025 at 1:32am
  
  Liz -- true gliss with most sample libraries which support it at all, including VSL, is limited to one octave pitch bend and your viola leap is far more than that. As I've set both the VSL preset and the Expression map to enable 12 step (one octave) gliss, it would work in that situation as in a number of my own quartets. As for the allegretto severo, I can look at this after my holiday -- perhaps there's something can be done!
- Liz Atems > David June 11, 2025 at 11:14am
  
  Thanks David. Please don't spend too much time trying to figure out how to force the viola to give the proper expression in my quartet. Unless there are pre-defined artics that do the trick, this is probably more trouble than it's worth. The 2nd violin does a much better job in the exposition, so I suspect it's just the violist.
Liz Atems June 12, 2025 at 12:19pm

I think I have the lengths of the fermatas / caesuras just right now. They're minimal now at letters D and E, and reduced at letters M and P. I also got rid of the 1st violin's worst bloopers (before letter K) by adding demisemiquaver rests at two points - not quite right musically, but not as bad as the bloopers. I updated the most recent audio file link in the OP.

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