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My Judging: Kathreptis Classical Form? 10/10 I thought it was all very well-formed. Idiomatic use of Keyboard instrument? 25/25 Very much so! Musical content? (is is based on a theme that could be considered halloweeny? Is the music developed well? Good arc?) 15/25 It just didn’t seem all that Halloweeny to me. But, it was very interesting to see you develop your themes! Score!!! And, NEAT score!!! 10/15 Oy.. bass clef with 8va? Don’t do that. Other than that, looks great! Paragraph doing a DETAILED analysis of your piece: 20/25 Could have been more detailed. TOTAL: 80/100 Bachian Classical Form? 10/10 Excellent work! :D Idiomatic use of Keyboard instrument? 20/25 There was a part of your toccata that lost my interest. When the quarter notes came along and stopped the motion. Do something more idiomatic with your instrument than hymn chords. Musical content? (is is based on a theme that could be considered halloweeny? Is the music developed well? Good arc?) 25/25 I loved the material! Very Halloweeny, for sure. Score!!! And, NEAT score!!! 15/15 Beautiful! Paragraph doing a DETAILED analysis of your piece: 20/25 Good. But, I could have used a walkthrough of at least PART of the fugue. TOTAL: 90/100 Austenite: I have nothing bad to say about this except: DUDE, work on your transitions. 3 dramatic pauses are enough in one piece. ;D TOTAL: 95/100 Sojar’s Judging: KATHREPTIS Classical Form: 6/10 – At the beginning it might look interesting but it would have worked better as a typical baroque suite instead of two movements in different way. Idiomatic use of Keyboard instrument: 15/25 – Not enough contrasts. Throughout most of the piece all three staves are played, rarely exposing just one or two voices, especially in the prelude. Musical content: 10/25 – Fugue deserves most of these points overall as it follows the textbook formal approach. First, I don't hear »halloweeny« theme in this one, nothing »scary«. Prelude never really puts an increasing development – the eights are always stopped with a bar or two of crochets which lead nowhere. Also the harmony remains rather static in all movements, using d minor too frequently even if it wanted to sound baroque-like. Modulations are too rare – a baroque type of harmoy would modulate to close tonalities frequently – F major, a minor, C major, g minor, Bflat major… Score: 5/15 – except for OK notation for organ there are no dynamic marks, nor register changes, nor articulation. Paragraph: 20/25 – it's not 100% detailed, but in general the presentation is quite fine and easy to follow. TOTAL: 56/100 BACHIAN Classical Form: 10/10 – A typical baroque form. Nothing to add. Idiomatic use of Keyboard instrument: 25/25 – Nothing really to say, it's OK as far is I undestand organ writing. However, do not perform this one on pneumatic organ. Musical content: 10/25 – The beginning features good start but for example – the unisonos in bars 7 and 8 are completely useless. Drammatic chords would sound thousands of times better. Toccata runs out of steam after about 4' 30''. The slow section is very, very boring. The Fugue should be more exciting compared to Toccata, but it's slow, »low-powered« and too short and it's based on a five note walk instead of a »theme«. The usage of harmony deserves most of the points though – the progress is logical in very much baroque-like. Score: 15/15 – Well, it's a baroque work which has no decisive articulation or dynamics so I can't really say anything against the presentation. Paragraph: 25/25 – Presented fine. Still, I think this competitions gives too many points considering less important stuff rather than music itself. There is no way this composition deserves so many points but I have to respect the scoring though. TOTAL: 85/100 AUSTENITE Classical Form: 9/10 a well crafted sonata-form in Beethoven-like dimension. A slow, mysterious start, followed by a traditional allegro movement with some slower intermezzos. I take one point away for too frequent changes of mood which intend to break the concentration to follow the content. Idiomatic use of Keyboard instrument: 23/25 Sometimes the piano part doesn't sound very convincing due to extreme differences of registers in both hands, otherwise it sounds piano-like. I am wondering if Austenite would play it live. Musical content: 20/25 Certainly most convincing compared to the other submitted works. Too bad the harmony sometimes does not feature more exciting chromaticism – the bars from 62 onwards should contain more chromatic surprises instead of always returning to more »careful« tonal pitch. Austenite needs an extra push to liberate himself from traditional tonality since there are some moments which suggest a potential transition towards 20th century chord progression – some semi-bitonal chords and free chromaticism are definitely promising. Score: 15/15 No complains here, properly scored. Paragraph: 25/25 Although I don't really see a point why using a sonata form to present such storyline, it is OK. TOTAL: 92/100 BUCKWHEAT Classical Form: 5/10 Buckwheat admits to use no classical or baroque form so half is excused. But it was meant to be in some sort of tranditional form, not a free one though. Idiomatic use of Keyboard instrument: 15/25 Not enough excitement to gain more points. The piano writing here is far too one-dimensional. Musical content: 10/25 I don't believe anybody would consider this piece »creepy«. It's a Mendelssohn-like tinted soft romantic piece without any drammatic progression towards a climax or something similar. Didn't really felt like suitable for Halloween. Score: 15/15 No complains here, properly scored, with all marks in it. Paragraph: 0/25 No paragraph, no points to add. TOTAL: 45 RESULTS: 1. AUSTENITE 92 points + 95 = 187 2. BACHIAN 85 points + 85 = 170 3. KATHREPTIS 56 points + 80 = 136 4. BUCKWHEAT DQ With best regards Crt Sojar Voglar

Hello guys, Sorry, I wasn't here for some days. Thank you for your works! I saved everything. In this month, I try to make a solo cello and cello+piano concert, because I have many pieces for that! After that, the concerts are still flexible. We keep in touch!

wow Austenite again haha. Congratulations! Take a break from all the winning! Just kidding. :)

Congrats, Austenite. Another good work. :thumbsup:

I knew it... Congratulations to Awesome Austenite!

A lot of the answer to you question will depend on what kind of surface style you intend to write in. I don't think you can really seperate deep-level structure from what happens 'on top' of the music. Some composers deliberately choose a style in which the sections, be that a melody, a chord, a texture, are very clear (Poulenc, mid-baroque, some minimalists, film scores) whereas at the opposite extreme some write their music as what seems like an endless transition from start to finish (Wagner, Sibelius, contemporary spectralist and other schools of minimalism). So the terms of what constitutes 'logical' structure and development will depend on what your long-range goal of the piece is. As you seem to be just starting out learning to compose, I would guess that you're probably experimenting more with the former style, which is fine. You might want to plan out different sections for a piece based on forms you've already encountered (things like minuet and trio movements or variations) and then come up with related ideas for the surface material, which you can then work out what goes where. You could alternatively take a single idea or process and follow it through. Some good examples of this appear in contemporary music, such as Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memorium Benjamin Britten, which uses just a descending scale played at different speeds in the string orchestra. Or the minimalist works by Steve Reich and others where two versions of the same thing are played with one slightly faster than the other and the piece ends when they coincide again. A simple canon is another example of this.

How do you analyse the scores? Are you going to tell me that you discovered it all for yourself, completely isolated from traditional theoretical models? I think not. Listening, playing and looking through scores is inspiring. I found it so inspiring that I went and read some rather "dry and uninspiring" books in order to better understand the workings of the inspiring music I was hearing, which led to me being even more inspired when I was able to listen to the works again with a full understanding. I'm sure the straw man is real, but they aren't here. You're arguing against a position that I'm not holding! You seem to have turned my position which is: read books to provide context for score study, into some ridiculous academic parody along the lines of: don't look at scores at all and rely solely on theoretical books. Go and find the people who hold this position and argue it with them. You're wasting your time with me. Your comparison is flawed because you don't know of any amateur composers from the 19th century. If their music was published, they weren't amateurs. Just like any era, there are some amazing musicians alive today; there are also some amazingly bad musicians alive today. You seem to be making some strange generalisations based on nostalgia for an era that you weren't even a part of. How the hell would you have any idea whether the basest sensationalist opportunist charlatan of the 19th century could effortlessly write basic classical pastiche or not? Perhaps you could give an example of such a piece of work, though I expect that you can't because it is a completely fallacious statement.

I understand that these questions may seem silly to more experienced composers, but there's a reason I started a thread called "Some Basic Questions". If you're not prepared to actually answer such basic questions, why waste your own time adding a snarky response to a discussion that has been very helpful and constructive so far? You "sincerely hope" that I'm not ten years old? I wasn't aware that everyone past a certain age was automatically expected to have a certain level of musical knowledge. Everyone has to start somewhere, and some later than others. There's no such thing as a stupid question, just stupid answers.

That's called syncopation, and in this context it's not only fine but probably sounds better than straight 4's all the way through. Off-beat accents add rhythmic drive.