Intimate Voices

At the request of a friend, I am posting some of Sibelius' music tonight! ^__^

The Sibelius String Quartet in D minor, "Intimate Voices" is not quite like the peppy, bright music I have been posting recently. Like the name "Intimate Voices" suggests, this composition for string quartet sounds like a conversation. I won't attempt to make up a storyline for the music- at least not right now, but you can hear when each musical line (or character) talks, agrees, disagrees and discusses amongst themselves. It is interesting to follow the mood of this piece and how it changes. There is discord and harmony, sadness and happiness, wisdom and folly and it is all illustrated in the conversations between the instruments. However, the overall tone of the music is somber and mournful. Perhaps the moments of happiness and harmony further intensify the main underlying theme of unhappiness in the quartet. For all my attempts to explain the themes of this music, I found it a little hard to follow. Lots of small unexpected mood changes pop up and sometimes it is hard to define how all the little changes in this piece contribute to the whole.

Here is the Emerson String Quartet's version:
Movement 1/2
Movement 3
Movement 4/5