Sketches for String Quartet: No. 1 - Spring

First of all, although this piece was finished on December 28, I didn't intentionally hold it back in order to pad my 2015 numbers -- really! It's just that the Blogger format forces me to post them as videos (there's a workaround, but I don't feel like going through that, either), and I'm still getting used to the new version of Windows Movie Maker; the one on my old XP machine was so much easier to use. And then there was the problem of finding the right pictures for it; I think for the next one I'll go back to just slapping a title on a background.

This is what was initially going to be part of a single piece entitled Three Sketches for String Quartet, but around the time of my previous post, I decided to split them into separate pieces, for a few reasons. First, I'm calling them sketches rather than movements of a real string quartet due to their short length and the lack of any real relationship between them. The first two were essentially done shortly after I started them in 2013, but I made several different starts on the third, and had gotten to thinking that it might take some time for the third to let me finish it. Also, looking back at the four other starts for the third sketch, I thought I could develop one or more of them into further sketches, but I'm not sure whether it will stop at seven, or if working on these other fragments might give me further ideas, so I can't put a number on the collection yet. I'll just post them in the order in which they're finished.

As mentioned above, the first two were essentially done back in 2013, but in anticipation of posting them, I did make a few final tweaks (mainly to this one), and the third was finished on the 28th, so I'll be posting each of these shortly.

So, why post a piece subtitled "spring" in the middle of winter? Simple -- the spring in the title isn't the season; it's meant as both a verb and the mechanical device. It's in 4/4, and is sort of in C major, but with a lot of chromaticism. This rendering is not really correct, because my sound library doesn't include sul ponticello strings (the lack of snap pizzicato, col legno, and non vibrato is also annoying, and glissandi are not realistic enough). Also, on the final chord I've gone back and forth between having it bowed or plucked, along with some combinations of the two, but here it is for now: