Quartet for Strings No.8

Ah, spring - when an old man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of retrograde inversions.

There is nary a sonata-allegro movement anywhere in this work. It appears to be merely a pastorale suite of twelve micro-movementlets, half of which are only about 90 seconds long. Admittedly, the six central movements, nos.4-9 - with their steadily and incrementally advancing tempi, their common variations on a compound meter, and their suspicious habit of generally ending with the notation: attacca - can easily be considered a single movement, alla variazioni; particularly as Movement 9 is an obvious partial analog of Movement 4. Movement 12, by the way, is an exact analog (based on a different permutation of the row) of Movement 1, apart from a few eccentric minor differences in phrasing, dynamics, and tempo. Enough glancing behind the curtain for now, however.

Why so many of the allegro and presto movements in this piece are so damned blithe and cheerful, I cannot explain. It is not like me.