# String Quartet (audio recording)



## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

Hi again, TC! I was given an opportunity to work with a great string quartet this weekend, and in a very short session we managed to make a pretty representative recording of my string quartet from the Spring of 2012, Fragments from an Apocryphal Gospel (soundcloud). I'd love to hear your thoughts on the piece, and I apologize for the occasional rough spots in the recording-we only had an hour and fifteen minutes from the moment the players first got the parts to rehearse _and_ record multiple takes of everything.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

that is an interesting piece with melancholy feel throughout it. I think for contemporary string quartet pieces, I prefer this style. Who is the composer? Or is it your own? That's a good composition, sounds familiar to ear and I enjoy that.


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## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

jurianbai said:


> that is an interesting piece with melancholy feel throughout it. I think for contemporary string quartet pieces, I prefer this style. Who is the composer? Or is it your own? That's a good composition, sounds familiar to ear and I enjoy that.


Hi jurianbai. Yes, the composition is my own. I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed it, and that you hear it as a contemporary work (so often I live and write in fear of being insufficiently modern: I think it is an anxiety instilled by the Academy in many young musicians). I hope the last movement left you less melancholy than the other three, for it was not my intent to be melancholy throughout. I had hoped the last movement would register as hopeful (a stretch), or at least restful.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

That's nice and worth a recording. Pardon my hazzy assesment. Yes, the last movement indeed a hopeful in mood. I also like the couple second on the last part of second movement, where there is an insertion of contrast melody. 

btw, contemporary is not my very specific speciality, I wish you can survive the anxiety and wrote something 'off-' the Academic-popular-demand.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

So why do I keep thinking of prelude to _Tristan und Isolde_ every now and then for the first three or so minutes of the piece. Well, it isn't difficult to answer. But at least it's nice thing for a piece of music to remind of. I liked most of the slower bits and none of the faster bits. My complain is that only in the latter you lay some considerable facture while the former remains as somewhat "bare" harmony, without any other element of music elaborated to join it and create more engaging whole.


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## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

Aramis said:


> So why do I keep thinking of prelude to _Tristan und Isolde_ every now and then for the first three or so minutes of the piece. Well, it isn't difficult to answer. But at least it's nice thing for a piece of music to remind of.


You are quite right- the answer isn't difficult at all. In the period when I wrote this quartet I was deeply enchanted by _Tristan_ (though I always have preferred the Liebestod to the prelude). The first movement especially makes use of a lot of chromatically descending lines (an old trope, and not specific to the music of Wagner) and the last chord of the movement, though spelled differently (and in a more open voicing), is enharmonically the same as Wagner's Tristan chord. At any rate, I'm glad it only reminds you of the work without seeming derivative or "pastiche".



> I liked most of the slower bits and none of the faster bits. My complain is that only in the latter you lay some considerable facture while the former remains as somewhat "bare" harmony, without any other element of music elaborated to join it and create more engaging whole.


For this I really have no response, except that the "bare" harmonies in the slower portions come about as a result of a harmonic process I was using at the time that tended to use only two or three different sonorities (just a few colors, if comparisons to painting are being made) and their inversions, all connected by common tones or other methods of "smoothing" voice leading between one chord and the next. I am sorry to hear you did not like the faster portions of the music, but I'm not sorry for writing them.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

MJTTOMB said:


> For this I really have no response, except that the "bare" harmonies in the slower portions come about as a result of a harmonic process I was using at the time that tended to use only two or three different sonorities (just a few colors, if comparisons to painting are being made) and their inversions, all connected by common tones or other methods of "smoothing" voice leading between one chord and the next.


Perhaps I've expressed myself badly. What I meant, is that sometimes you get chord... chord... next chord... (...) kind of music. No matter how interesting the harmony is, this may get boring with time. The few moving voices that you have placed undernath these chords in slower parts don't create enough diversity or density, I think. But that doesn't mean much, I suppose it's better for you to get working on another work(s) and leave this composition be.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

I think it's beautiful. Reminiscent of Wagner, yes, but late Wagner is the jumping-off point into the modern era anyway. I can see how people who aren't fans of slow movements might get bored by this -- it is mainly slow, and similar slow ideas recur throughout the composition. But personally I really like what you do with the slow movement writing. Everything keeps moving and each chord is there for a reason. It's fine work and quite a sophisticated, if brief, quartet.

Did you have a particular one of the apocryphal gospels in mind?


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## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

Aramis said:


> Perhaps I've expressed myself badly. What I meant, is that sometimes you get chord... chord... next chord... (...) kind of music. No matter how interesting the harmony is, this may get boring with time. The few moving voices that you have placed undernath these chords in slower parts don't create enough diversity or density, I think. But that doesn't mean much, I suppose it's better for you to get working on another work(s) and leave this composition be.


I can understand what you mean, but to say the music is only "chord, chord, next chord", etc. is an exaggeration. Throughout the piece, chords are not treated as discrete successive events like you describe- they all occur within the context of phrases. I am not even totally convinced that it is necessarily a bad thing when music acts in such a way ("chord, chord, next chord", with phrases). Do not all chorales and many other works operate on this sort of principle?



hreichgott said:


> I think it's beautiful. Reminiscent of Wagner, yes, but late Wagner is the jumping-off point into the modern era anyway. I can see how people who aren't fans of slow movements might get bored by this -- it is mainly slow, and similar slow ideas recur throughout the composition. But personally I really like what you do with the slow movement writing. Everything keeps moving and each chord is there for a reason. It's fine work and quite a sophisticated, if brief, quartet.
> 
> Did you have a particular one of the apocryphal gospels in mind?


I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'm glad you picked up on the recurrences of some of the motives between movements! I tried to tie the movements together by using similar materials in each.

As for the title, it comes from a fictional apocryphal gospel imagined by Jorge Luis Borges.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

A fine piece, enjoying the harmonies a lot. Good balance of the modern and the late romantic. I think however it is important to let the music speak for itself, if you title it things like 'he that weeps' and try too hard to make it sound sad it just feels a bit overwrought and dare I say cheesy? I think maybe at this stage your music might benefit from a bit more emotional detachment. :tiphat: 

I share these problems because I am an amateur composer and a huge fan of Tristan and when I get deeply into it, it leaves me feeling very melancholy, almost morbidly so! Perhaps its just a personal preference but I think it is better when composers while starting out stick to the absolute, more abstract music. Rather than trying to convey feeling or emotions or a story.


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## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

Jobis said:


> A fine piece, enjoying the harmonies a lot. Good balance of the modern and the late romantic. I think however it is important to let the music speak for itself, if you title it things like 'he that weeps' and try too hard to make it sound sad it just feels a bit overwrought and dare I say cheesy? I think maybe at this stage your music might benefit from a bit more emotional detachment. :tiphat:
> 
> I share these problems because I am an amateur composer and a huge fan of Tristan and when I get deeply into it, it leaves me feeling very melancholy, almost morbidly so! Perhaps its just a personal preference but I think it is better when composers while starting out stick to the absolute, more abstract music. Rather than trying to convey feeling or emotions or a story.


Thanks for your feedback! I agree that music should speak for itself, so I am not particularly concerned by the titles (all of which are completely extramusical). Judging the music by the titles or by its relation to the titles would not be a very convincing musical criticism. The titles, as I've previously mentioned, come from a text by Borges-"Wretched is he who weeps, for he has the miserable habit of weeping". Borges here is not sympathizing in the least with the subject, but suggesting, in his own words from a later interview, that "pondering ill-fortune and tears is nothing but cowardice. Or even demagogic". It was never my intent to convey only the emotions of a weeping man, as that would be very one-sided (and without any musical conflict to be resolved). If that had been my intention, there would only be one motive (the "weepy" motive at the start) in the entire first movement, but as it were, there are two, and they are very different.

On your second point I disagree strongly. I've written enough pastiche and enough emotionally detached music (my first string quartet was a 15-minute Haydnesque *shudder*) to feel relatively comfortable with including poetics (not purely emotional materials) in my music. What would be considered "starting out" is fairly subjective, but a little bit of my background might help. I'm not counting exactly because I don't know the precise time when I started writing "serious" music, but I have been writing now for about 7 years, the last three of them as a composition major under the instruction of professionals. In a sense I am "technically" a professional composer, in that I have received monetary commissions from faculty and students, but this is not enough money to sustain a "career", so I'll stick to calling myself a student. Nonetheless, my contention (counter to yours) is that composers, while starting out, should exercise total freedom in their writing, whether that leads them to absolute music, program music, concrete music, or any form of music that defies classification in such categories. At the beginning stage, it is more important _that_ they are writing than _what_ they are writing, so long as their continued practice of composition allows them to continue developing the skills of the craft. For some, emotional detachment may be the way forward. For others, this may not be the case. In short, I'm not satisfied by your idea of how young or beginning composers should write, as it seems too unidimensional to grapple effectively with the enormous variety of styles and approaches employed by living composers today.


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## madviolist (Jan 10, 2012)

I love it. You know, I'm interested mainly in the chamber music (as a composer, but also as a performer) and this is so intimate and as close to listener as it can even be ... very well done! Mature work.


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