saki101

"morbid connection": Yes, I doubt John is up on his music history, even clarinet literature!

I can see I'm not the only only who has tried to imagine Sherlock in a quartet and failed. :) Or, I could imagine how quickly the quartet would collapse when he raked the other members over the coals. I would also feel sorry for any of his accompanists!

Those late quartets would be a challenge, considering their contrapuntal texture. From what I hear from that violinist friend, even double-stopping for an extended period would be extremely hard to do. That's why I was thinking that Sherlock might try to convert one part into a solo (meaning almost all of it would simply be the V1 part) and hear the rest in his head. At any points where the V1 was put into an accompanimental role, he could try to replace it with a main melody. Could be quite challenging, but SH loves his puzzles.

As for tampering, there is an aesthetic that's associated with Western classical music that you don't try to alter a "great" work, although 1) people have done transcriptions and arrangements for centuries, and 2) that aesthetic itself is relatively new in Western classical music (even the idea of a canon great works is not something believed in for much of music history--people wanted new, fresh pieces). I can see SH happily ignoring the "no tampering" rule.

Yes, I hate when I change tense or the number of subjects and then forget to edit; it happens often enough to annoy me, at any rate!

I love how the rondo form was not planned; I was looking at a rondo and then this part and then made a connection.