Professor Mocny
MUS 114
26 September 2014
String Power
On the evening of September 25, 2014 at 8pm in Staples Family Concert Hall, my mind was mesmerized by the illustrious St. Lawrence String Quartet of Stanford University in California. To prepare myself for the concert, I selected two pieces from the program to analyze. The first being String Quartet in C major, Op. 76, No.3 “Emperor” Poco adagio cantabile, by Joseph Hayden via YouTube. The performers of the piece were director/violinist: Jonathan Camay, violinist: Raymond Ovens, violist: Andrew Williams, and cellist: Mats Lindstrom of the Royal Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble based in London. The second piece I listened to was String Quartet in C major, Op. …show more content…
Lawrence String quartet performance, I have a deeper appreciation for live performances more than recorded performances. The live concert performance empowered me to pinpoint such musical elements as: dynamics, timbre, rhythm, and texture. Just as Bonds states in Chapter 1 “Music exerts a powerful pull on the human spirit,” I felt this “pull” throughout the entire performance. I enjoyed the live performance of the pieces because the performer’s emotions allowed for me to understand the meaning behind the pieces. I could guess when the mood of the pieces changed from the demeanor of the performers. Geoff Nuttall was the main performer I looked to when questioning the emotion of a piece. The live performance of Dvorak’s String Quartet in C major Op. 61 made me love the piece even more. My favorite and most memorable part of the piece was the string plucking by violinist Geoff Nuttall. I never paid attention to this in the recording. There was much power and than a sweet section within the piece as if a chase was occurring for timbre. This was ultimately my favorite piece.
The live performance of Haydn’s String Quartet in C major, Op. 76, No. 3 “Emperor” Allegro was more enjoyable than the recording. I felt that the each member of the quartet had his or her own dynamic within the music. I could identify the “1” in the rhythm; however, I could not identify the rest. The piece had a homophonic texture because the violins were leading while the viola and