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string trio or quartet for wedding?

shellbelle321shellbelle321 member
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in Minnesota-Minneapolis and St. Paul
What do you think of a string trio vs. a string quartet for my ceremony and cocktail hour? I know I want a cello and violin and all strings (no flute, etc) but not really sure after that. Suggestions for what you have seen work or not work? Or any great vendors to recommend? My ceremony is in Minneapolis.
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Re: string trio or quartet for wedding?

  • shellbelle321shellbelle321 member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    After about 5 more mins of research, I found this helpful comment on a site that made up my mind towards the quartet.
    "I don't know anything about wedding music in particular, but I know about classical music, and the difference between a string quartet and a string trio makes a huge difference to the range of music that can be played. Compositions for string quartet are very common; compositions for string trios are rare. Try Googling "string quartet" in quotes, then comparing this to a search for "string trio"; the latter has less than 2% as many results as the former because it's so rare.

    There are very good musical reasons for this. The most basic chord in Western music is a triad, which consists of 3 different notes (for instance, a C major triad is C, E, and G). So, that requires a minimum of 3 strings to play the chord. If you think about that situation, you can see how limited a string trio is: playing the most basic possible chord uses up all its resources. It can never play a triad with even one of the notes doubled (in unison or an octave higher), and it can't play even the basic 3-string triad with a melody being played independently at the same time. (It is technically possible for one of the instruments to play 2 notes at once, but this doesn't work very well as anything more than a quick flourish.) Adding a fourth string opens up so, so many possibilities as far as expressiveness and repertoire. That could easily be worth an extra $200 for an important, lavish event if you can afford it."
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  • lstifterlstifter member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    I had string trio at my wedding, and when I asked about the range of music I was told it wouldn't be significantly limited by the trio versus the quartet.  Maybe they've just worked around the problems so that an average person wont know the difference, I'm not sure.  I had many "standard" wedding songs played and I thought they all sounded beautiful.
     
    I loved the trio and thought I made the right choice by choosing them over the quartet.  But I also struggled in the decision.
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