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I have had the good fortune to live on Central Park in New York for six years. I’ve had the place all to myself in the winter and have had to share it with tourists in the summer. It has many points of interest, such that each are singular and need no colorful qualification. There is The Lake, The Pond, The Meer and The Beach (yes, the park has a real beach). The Sheep Meadow, The Bridal Path, The Boathouse, and so on. One of each. And the Carousel. That too, unique, except for the children who are always the same at five years old. Their mothers bring them here to go around on the wooden horses as the motor cranks up and up and up and the jangly circus music begins, and all the many little hearts that beat so fast in their fearless joy … I wanted to share this little vignette with you. Sorry, no score, but I can give you the instrumentation. 2 clarinets, 1 bassoon, 1 Horn in F, Bb trumpet, piano, harp, glockenspiel and strings.

This is what happens when you have to write daily pieces and you get bored with writing crap. I'm quite proud of this work, even though it may not be conventional in any sense of the word. I hope you enjoy this one!

Yes, in terms of "economy," you may find it extra difficult to get a set of pieces like this performed. The whole set only takes up a minute and a half of concert time, but they require eight players. The more players you require, the harder it is to get on a program and the more substantial a piece has to be to earn a space in a concert. Think like the director putting a concert together. Every time you need to add one more player, life becomes harder. Someone needs to know a good player who plays the instrument. That player needs to have a gap in their schedule that will allow them to make at least one rehearsal and the concert. If they are a professional player, you need to have funds to pay them. If they are not a professional, you need to be sure that they really can handle the music without stage fright issues. So if a piece calls for 8 players, instead of 4, there needs to be an obvious reason that each player is really necessary. Because for each player you add, putting on the concert becomes slightly more difficult. The groups I perform with both regularly change the instrumentation of pieces they perform. Either we can't manage to book a good quality harpist, so we cover the harp part on piano; or we can't justify hiring an English horn just for one piece in a 90-minute program, so we have someone else in the brass who isn't playing during those measures cover that English horn part. Sometimes there is no good work around solution, so we just decide not to add a piece to the program. Sometimes the composer, or a later editor, has thought about this possibility and there are several editions of the piece available, each with different numbers and varieties of instruments to cover all possible budgets and shortages of quality players. Particularly because your "Sententia" are so short, they become harder to justify in a program. They aren't substantial enough to be half of a concert program, or a quarter of a program in which they are contrasted with other pieces in other styles. It's very rare for a director to be putting together a program and think, "I just need a minute more music." They need 10 minutes more. Or 15 minutes more. If you need a minute more music, you can just as easily do without the minute more music. It doesn't really solve a problem for the person deciding what will go into the program. Grouping these is a VERY good idea to get around that problem, but you may want to group them in larger numbers. So if you want to write very short pieces, they are probably best for an instrument or two, as you have been doing, so they can be used in a recital setting. When a single player, or a player plus accompanist can pick whatever they want to play, it's easy for them to pick up one more piece, (your piece), to learn, just because they like it. The more people there are, the more expensive it becomes to add each piece, in terms of time and money, so there has to be enough content there to justify the choice of the piece. I think that's what Luis and Monarcheon are getting at.

Just in the notes section before the actual score. So say this was a copyrighted, published piece; it would be cover page, table of contents, extra instructions, then score.

I think the last competition seemed more like an exercise in orchestration rather than a way to stimulate creativity. I think future competitions should be broad in terms of criteria to encourage composers of all types to participate. For example, the Shakespeare one really brought out great entries of incredible breadth and scope. Contests that have narrow criteria like requiring specific ensembles, forms, or themes are going generate far less interest. I also think that we may want to have a rule that the winner of a competition should be ineligible for consideration from participating (at least officially) in another one for a certain period of time and instead, the previous winner should be a judge and/or be permitted to come up with the rules for the next one. Otherwise, it will be a revolving door of the same small cadre of winners which over time will discourage others from entering they feel they have no chance of winning. At the same time this would give previous winners acknowledgment by letting them have a role in devising/judging the next one (if they so choose).

I agree. You have good rhythmic and range concepts throughout but since everything is so compartmentalized, I don't feel as though this huge ensemble was necessary. However, if you added an element of spacing in this ensemble (i.e. telling players to sit a certain length away from each other), like a huge semicircle across the stage, perhaps the effect would be different.

This is so nice. Dreamy and with beautiful contrasts (the trumpet at 1:00). The combination of instruments sounds good.

Three tracks each with slightly different characteristics.