Half String Quartet

Half String Quartet is a collection of three different pieces: The Beginning, Recitative, and The Ending, and are played in the respective order. Each piece has a different feel to it. The first one feels very melancholic and exaggerated. The contrast between legato and staccato and the fast and dramatic crescendos give the beginning of the first movement a very smooth “breath” type of sound. The thing that I would like to talk about in the second piece is the tempo. The composer put in the description of the tempo the EXACT same thing that I would write. He wrote “Very freely, pushing and pulling tempo a lot”. I think that the composer realizes that sometimes a steady tempo actually devolves a piece. I think Jack Stamp put it best. He compared music to talking in regards to tempo. He stated that people speed up or slow down their talking to convey different emotions. I think that slowing down and speeding up music in specific areas can create emotion that otherwise wouldn’t be there. The third piece is very hectic and energetic. The time signatures are very different in this piece and the music moves by fast so it is very difficult to stay with it. I’ve personally never seen a song in 10/8 and this one had a little bit of it and I thought that part was very interesting.

A very powerful piece of the music is measures 67 through 85 in the third movement. This part gives the whole piece an extra layer of aggressiveness that gives the piece a little bit of contrast even though the whole movement is aggressive and dissonant. However, the rhythms in this part make the dissonance a little bit easier to listen to because all the notes are lined up between the two parts. They are playing a unison rhythm.

The most challenging part of listening and reading along to this piece was the time signatures, and looking at everybody else’s posts I know I’m not the only one. The time signature just changed so much and some were very unique (example would be around 149 in the third movement). It was hard to keep track and I found myself by the end of the piece just listening because I was totally lost.

The parts I found most rewarding were the parts where the piece seemed to settle into a key and have a sense of tonality, which was very scarce. However, I have come to realize that when the sense is tonality is lost for so long, it is very much more powerful when it comes back.