String Quartet

My string quartet is in three movements (played without a break). I started out my musical life as a violinist and, after years of not doing so, I have recently come back, very happily to writing for strings. Although the piece is very ornate (at least for me) and extremely demanding to play, I really think of it being about some fundamentals of string playing: attack, sustain and articulation. The piece is arranged so that, for the most part, the attacks are all arrayed in the first movement, the second is concerned with bowing, especially as a metaphor for breathing, and the third is concerned about resonance and decay. So, in a way, I think of the piece as one extremely long bow-stroke.