I'm giving out this link to friends and family who do not usually read this blog, so here is a little background to this project.
I first wrote a composition in 1969, in Peradeniya, the summer before going to campus. Eric Philips, an Australian, was visiting for a semester, before he headed back to complete his Ph.D. in Australia. The piece I had written was a sort of fantasia on Jesu meine Freude, a tune of Johann Crüger, and Ranee Chinappa and Eric tried to perform it from the manuscript to see how it sounded. It sounded barely OK. (Eric was frustrated because I had written it in Baroque style, and tried to encourage me to move into the 20th century at least, but I resisted . . . what can you do? This was my idiom, and to some extent, still is.)
After this, for a while, I focused on harmonizing various tunes that caught my fancy. My next attempt at something close to composition was, it turned out, based on a song by Dutch composer Jonny Heykens, called Starlight Serenade. My composition, based on the fragment of the Heykens song that I must have picked up somewhere, was a little different.
The string quartet was begun in November of 2017, and finished in three movements in May of 2018. After it was finished, I decided to orchestrate it, and all the versions you might be interested in are linked below.
The Straight-Up String Quartet, No Chaser
ii - Andante score [This is a pdf of sheet music, and not a music file!]
iii - Presto score [Also sheet music.]
Alternative versions of the plain string quartet movements:
i - Allegro score [Also sheet music.]
The Quartet orchestrated
These are just for fun, so they're not quite the latest versions!
Other versions
iii - Presto, Organ transcription (with a brief additional episode)
Video
[Added later:] here's a video of the whole thing.Here's a video of the orchestrated Movement ii.
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