Quartetto Piccolo in D Locrian
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Instrumentation
Cello
1
Viola
1
Violin
2
Additional Information
A single movement string quartet written to help fill the need for more short length string quartets.
The piece comprises 4 short movements which follow one another without a break. It is of classical quartet format but very concise. It features the rarely used Locrian Mode. The difficulty with this mode is the exposed tritone, ‘the Devil in music’, which means that there is no dominant in the scale unless chromatically altered. The Phrygian cadence tends to make a more effective finish than the more familiar perfect cadence in this mode. Alternatively, the diminished seventh can be used in place of the dominant chord.
