# Need advice on arranging second movement



## caters

As you might know from my K 545 post in the Today's Composers subforum, I am arranging K 545 for a string quartet. Instead of just doing the first movement, I will be doing all the movements. I need some advice on arranging the second movement of K 545 for a string quartet. I only really hear 3 active voices with a possible 4th voice at the cadences(of which there are a lot because it is in the form of a rondo).

The layman's solution would be octave doubling. But I want to add to the existing harmony, not just the texture. So I was wondering if any of you string players had any advice for me. Another easy solution would be parallel thirds like I use in the scalar transition of the first movement. Except it isn't as easy to make it harmonically sound with the bass as it sounds.

Here is a video of the Andante movement on a piano so you can hear what I'm talking about when I say that there are only 3 active voices:






I guess I could use call and response but I only see a few suitable places for it. Here are the correlations between the voices in the piano score and the instruments in my first draft of my arrangement of the second movement:


Lowest notes of Alberti bass(which in my arrangement are played as quarter notes) - Cello
Sixteenth note alternations in Alberti bass - Viola
Melody - Violin

I was thinking that if I'm going to use pizzicato, this second movement would be an ideal place to do pizzicato. If that requires moving the Alberti bass up to higher staves and octaves so that the cellist can transition to arco for the cadences without it being sloppy, then so be it. Though I think, at a tempo of quarter note = 60 BPM, this could occur without any rests at all and still not be sloppy, though I may be wrong on that.

So yeah, any advice on writing a part for the second violin that isn't simply in parallel thirds or octave doubling with the first violin while still staying honest to Mozart's original harmony?


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