justin Long Tone
Posts: 2
(12/28/03 10:52 am) Reply
String Quartet technique
what a shame , although i am a string player, but i am still looking of guidance
i am attempting to write a piece in the style of Ravel
can anyone give me some suggestion on writing a string quartet, eg form, structure,
orchestration technique ,texture, harmony??
the best advice i could give you without giving away all the beauty that is study , is to say this...
Buy a box set and score of the complete string quartets of Beethoven. (while not impressionistic...obviously, it will give you all you need to know about forms, writing, and the like. then move on from there.
string quartets
You've chosen an area in which there's a lot of material to look at. The best thing to do is to pick up scores and recordings for as many string quartets as you can. The ones to start out with would be Beethoven and Haydn. Those make up the bulk of the quartet repitoire. Once you've looked at those take a look at some by the romantics like Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Borodin, etc. Then (since this is the one you're most interested in) listen to the Ravel and also the Debussy quartets. I would also recommend looking at some more modern quartets: Ives, Britten, Shostakovich, Bartok, Carter, etc.
When looking at these pay attention to the way ideas are past around the different instruments. Also look at how the 4 voices are traditionaly used (this will be most apparent in the Beethoven and Haydn - not so much in the others). There's a lot of varition in these quartets as far as form goes, so you should get some different ideas about the big structure of a quartet.
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, is to say this...