In fairness, string quartets are such amazing things that even very bad ones, or at least very basic ones, can still be entirely worth while.
Here's my stupid little noodle, which isn't really a composition, its just me trying to understand the expressive dimensions of what's possible with the library:
Even though I'm just fumbling around on the keyboard, the way the strings start to work together, however briefly, starting at ~0:50, for that fleeting moment I do think you can feel that "string quartet effect", which suggests that there's something very interesting possible here - even within the limitations of sample libraries, even within the (even more severe) limitations of my compositional skills.
There's also a sense that, while it's always worthwhile studying Beethoven and Hayden, that maybe not the best model to set yourself.
For one thing, trying to mock up a Beethoven quartet on any existing sample library is setting yourself up for not just disappointment, but despondency and despair.
For another, in that one can write Beethoven string quartets like Beethoven, setting out with Beethoven as your gold standard is setting yourself up for not just disappointment, but despondency and despair.
Instead, how about taking as a model maybe something more minimalist? Jane Antonia Cornish, or maybe Olafur Arnalds recent EP where he arranges some tracks off his latest album.
It's definitely not beethoven. But it does have that "string quartet effect" - which is fundamentally about how the different voiced both blend into harmonies, and then separate into separate lines.
In this sense, "the string quartet effect" is very fundamentally about counterpoint.
But you can buy a basic course on counterpoint/voice-leading for $10 of Udemy. Or bettter yet, check out Alain's scoreclub courses on counterpoint. They're not going to get you to Beethoven levels, but there's a wonderful simplicity in some of these more minimalist string quartets.
I also found David Huron's "Voice Leading: The Science Behind a Musical Art" very helpful in understanding just what the "string quartet effect" is. Huron isn't going to teach you voice leading or counterpoint, but it provides a really solid basis for what is, at a basic level, the effect in human perception that makes string quartets so amazing. (And why string quartets work so differently from, say, Jazz quartets).
And it's a perceptual effect that I feel starts to kick in even at those few seconds around 0:50 - ~0:55 in that above fumbling noodle.
Of course Beethoven wouldn't be too impressed by either my noodles or by Olafurs quartets.
But - continuing some of my theorizing from yesterday on this thread -
Yeah, but what does Neo-Classical mean I’m assuming that’s a joke, and that you you’re not actually inviting me to write another essay on the subject ... because otherwise we really could be all day :)
vi-control.net
I think that the sense of returning-to-something of the 'neo-' in the 'neo-classicism' of composers like Olafur and Cornish are indeed looking to find some kind of simpler essence that is somehow lost or obscured in the layers of complexity that accrete in various schools of composition.
One such essence - I conjecture - is precisely what I'm calling here the "string quartet effect". Not that it's easy to write. But even if I were to aspire to write with Beethoven-esque levels of complexity in string quartets, I think the first thing to learn is fundamentally how to distill the evocation of the "string quartet effect" in the simplest, most minimalist way first.
For there are truly beautiful string quartets, yet to be written, that don't even need to climb the Herculean mountain of the oeuvre of Beethoven of Hayden, or even attempt to deconstruct the anxiety of that influence.