I am honored that my string quartet “Spring Suite” was premiered virtually this month by the Odin Quartet as part of the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra’s virtual season. The Toronto-based string quartet did a fantastic job, and I am quite pleased with how it all turned out.
The eight-minute composition is in three movements:
“Awaken”
“Bloom”
“Frolic”
To help get started writing, I needed some inspiration. So I wrote the first four musical notes of the suite as a cipher to represent the letters of the quartet’s name: “O-D-I-N”. This cluster created some tension and was enough to get me going!
Overall, I tried to keep the harmonic content as “modal” as possible. There are almost no accidentals throughout. If I wanted a different “sound”, I would change key centers.
The second movement is more of a “pop” tune with its four-chord progression. However, for the first and third movements, I admit that I did not have a game plan or structure in mind. Just a sound in my mind and a model of Ravel’s string quartet for inspiration. I wrote the pieces from a blank slate and not at the piano. This was good in that it created a sense of freshness with many ideas. That said, I have since shied away from this approach for musical structures as I often get stuck and pieces become disjointed. This has been part of my learning and devleopment.
I hope you enjoy listening. Please let me know what you think of this writing style.
I confess, string quartets are out of my wheelhouse (as listening to anything I’ve written will resoundingly attest), but I thought your composition was outstanding! Both modern sounding and lyrical, and a fun third movement! And what a great recording of it.
I was aiming to sound modern yet lyrical, so I am happy to know you got that out of it. Hoping to be able to reach the traditional crowd as well as the contemporary classical folks. We’ll see.
WOWWWW !!! It’s GREAT !!!
There is a wonderfull balance between modern and classical composition.
It seems to me that even the performers have been able to interpret the piece very well.
Firstly, how lovely to hear a real string quartet (rather than a virtual one!) - and it was played and recorded beautifully.
The piece is wonderful. The Ravel quartet is one of my favourites too, so I get the inspiration, and could hear distant echoes of it in parts (I mean that as a compliment!) but it still sounds very fresh and modern!
