String Quartet No. 1

Cover: Suzan Woodruff, *Monsoon I*, acrylic on panel, 2003

String Quartet No. 1 – Slow, and keeping my sanity

Today I spent an hour and a half writing three measures the second violin. The time I put towards composing each day is minimal but it also helps me reset. For the past month I’ve had to put in 12-hour days at work, so any time I can put towards composing is valuable. I don’t let my work life bleed into my music life and, ignoring all keen psychological analysis to the contrary, I feel that I’ve kept it separate.

String Quartet No. 1 – Pausing the first movement, beginning the second, stealing

The value in writing a complex rhythm such as, say, a dotted quarter followed by a dotted eighth followed by a dotted sixteenth, is not for the exactitude of the performance but for the communication to the performer that these are all notes of diminished length that should feel like dotted notes. That is: notes that have not-quite-finished and are expecting another note to rhythmically appear just before the end of their time.

String Quartet No. 1 – Approaching chamber music

After finishing the symphony and writing nearly every day for nine months, I felt a loss. I quickly moved to getting the audio cleaned up in Dorico and so the loss was brief. Finishing the audio, I enjoyed resting for about a week before feeling restless again and so, not wanting to force anything but wanting to get back to writing, I waited for inspiration.