I wrote this quartet as an opportunity for myself to practice writing some easier, more traditional-leaning music than my usual. If you'd like, feel free to give any sort of feedback/criticism you might have; it would all be much appreciated and fun to read.
Yeah, I really like that. 2nd and 3rd movements maybe more than the first. I really like the layered stuff where different voices enter in a staggered way. Bell tones are great too, passing the line around between the voices is a really good writing technique. I think I could convince my quartet to add this to the book. How do I get hold of a copy? We do have one guy who likes anything as long as it was an old jazz standard, but there are 3 of us that like to play serious music from time to time as weil.
As far as criticism, maybe raise the general tessitura a little to keep it from getting muddy - when the 3 lower voices are all on the staff at the same time, it can get hard to listen to, but this one seemed to work with the rhythms and more staccato nature of the tune.
One thing I might encourage you to do would be to try to incorporate more modern syncopated rhythm with the more classic form/tonality. My quartet is generally kind of conservative, so they don't like really "out" stuff. The closer to jazz it is, the more they tend to like it. But this is very listenable and playable.
hyperbolica wrote: Mon Feb 09, 2026 8:09 pm
Yeah, I really like that. 2nd and 3rd movements maybe more than the first. I really like the layered stuff where different voices enter in a staggered way. Bell tones are great too, passing the line around between the voices is a really good writing technique. I think I could convince my quartet to add this to the book. How do I get hold of a copy? We do have one guy who likes anything as long as it was an old jazz standard, but there are 3 of us that like to play serious music from time to time as weil.
As far as criticism, maybe raise the general tessitura a little to keep it from getting muddy - when the 3 lower voices are all on the staff at the same time, it can get hard to listen to, but this one seemed to work with the rhythms and more staccato nature of the tune.
One thing I might encourage you to do would be to try to incorporate more modern syncopated rhythm with the more classic form/tonality. My quartet is generally kind of conservative, so they don't like really "out" stuff. The closer to jazz it is, the more they tend to like it. But this is very listenable and playable.
Thanks so much for posting this.
Thanks for the comments! I'll pay attention to how all that affects things when I get to hear it played.
If you're interested, all of my stuff is on my website, https://robertbomar.com. It's a bit messy at the moment, since I haven't gotten around to categorizing everything, but this piece will be at the very top of the list.
