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This falls squarely under the category of "what do y'all think of this?" I here present for your consideration the charming villancico "Llegad, moradores de aqueste pensil" by Spanish-born Mexican composer Francisco Martinez de la Costa (1739-1769?). The work was composed for the Solemnity of St. Peter at Oaxaca Cathedral, Mexico, sometime between 1765 and 1769, and is scored for vocal soloists, mixed chorus, trumpet, strings, and continuo (baroque guitar and portative organ, if I remember rightly). The linked recording is of a performance of this work by the Austin Baroque Orchestra and Chorus (I am a member of both) in November, 2015 at historic Mission Concepcion (1731) in San Antonio, Texas. This work has never been published, remaining in manuscript form in the archives of Oaxaca Cathedral, and this performance was probably one of the first anywhere in nearly 200 years, and almost certainly the first in the United States. The performing edition was prepared by ABO's director, Billy Traylor. For those who may not know (most of us), a villancico is a vocal work based on a specific poetical form; it usually consists of a chorus (estribillo) followed by several verses (coplas) and a final repetition of the chorus. Villancicos were extremely popular in Spain and Portugal and their Latin American colonies from the late 15th through 18th Centuries. Some are religious, like this one, but there are many secular villancicos as well. Very little is know of the life of Martinez de la Costa. He was born and trained in Spain, and by 1765 he had become maestro de capilla of Oaxaca Cathedral in the south of Mexico. In 1769 he requested a leave of absence to return to Spain to take care of some of his father's business, and was never heard from again. It is presumed he died while at sea on the voyage home. Now that you know more about villancicos and this unfortunate young Mexican composer than you ever thought you wanted, have a listen to this delightful, quirky little piece. The writing is nothing if not unique and individual. I'll be interested to know what you think. Cheers! https://soundcloud.com/austinbaroqueorchestra/llegad-moradores

Well then, you appear to be a minimalist in the best sense of the term. I think there are a lot of instrumentalists who would like to see more music like this, so you're probably on the right track, and you do it well. By the way, I noticed that you're from Lebanon! My ex-husband was born and raised in Beirut, and left during the great civil war to go to college in the United States. After he got his green card, we were able to visit Lebanon twice, and I loved it. It still has its challenges, but it's such a beautiful country, and the people are so friendly. I hope to visit again someday.

1. Really disjointed sounding, at least to me. And I know it's supposed to be pointalistic but it suffered from a lack of coherency from what I heard. Yes, I hear the main motive repeated but I struggle to find one all-encompassing motivic style. Some of the notes mesh poorly in the vertical sense (mm. 8, 9) and overall it just didn't really speak to me. 2. The motivic line and the ripieno line really don't match to me. I know that it's repeated, but that doesn't inherently justify its use. There are more places where the vertical chords don't really blend as well. I would have personally used the rhythm of the last measure as the main motif, since it fits better with the time signature and progresses with chords rather than separate, polymodal lines. 3. This one was more enjoyable. My only real complaint is that you seem to have a strange disconnect between the tonic and dominant chords in the first system of music. This one flows a lot better than the other two though. I agree that the trumpeter should have acknowledged the work, at the very least. There's elitism, then there's being stuck up. I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Cheers---

Your french horn player is going to have a word with you, haha. That goes pretty high up. The section at 1:13 was a really harsh dropoff from the energy of the previous section; the transitions could be better. Though I will say that the 1:13 was quite nice, the ending was really unsatisfactory for me... ending on a tonic C with no bass support or timbral percussion. It felt like you didn't really know how to end the cyclical chord progression. When you use repeated phrase segments sometimes it gets out of hand. For example, at around 1:03 you have this figure in the piano that only melds with some of the chords you place underneath it... the Em7 chord doesn't really fit the bill well for the ostinato. I just want more from it. The length is okay, I suppose, but I don't get the sense that a lot of the chord or phrase choices were done with a lot of vertical conviction as much as the horizontal. If it's the first thing you've written, color me impressed, since you have an idea as to what your final project to be. You know what you want each instrument or section to do, but the chordal execution is suffered. I think it's a great draft, especially the second major section, but I guess I was looking for different things.