Variations on Happy Birthday for String Quartet

Score and Parts

By Peter Heidrich

We were needing an interesting, twisty version of Happy Birthday to have in our arsenal for the occasional birthday acknowledgement. This was perfect and has a range of levels in their styles of some 14. I'd call some easy, some difficult and the rest in between. All catchy, changing...

a boring overdone Happy Birthday tune into ones very pleasant to listen to. So I'll rate it intermediate as an average.

This wonderfully clever, sophisticated, extremely witty piece delighted a room full of musicologists and classical music lovers at my mom's 75th birthday party. I've never seen many of these people actually laugh out loud before! I hired a string quartet from the doctoral program at our local university...

to perform it (along with some light fare from Mozart), and they handled it with grace, ease, expertise, and wit--and they had a great time, too! I gave them the score to keep for future gigs, and it will be a staple in their party repertoire. Very highly recommended.

Very creative and well written. It helps if you are familiar with various famous chamber music works, to be able to recognize the work made into Happy Birthday.

Our local youth chamber orchestra just played a number of these variations as part of the 45th anniversary of the group. Each variation was amazing. Truely caught the style of each of the composers he was mimicking. The audience went wild, laughing and clapping. NOT the usual staid classical music...

. Loved it so much am buying it for personal use now.