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Very beautiful and moving, Theo. I especially like the first 5 minutes or so. The performance is also impressive, especially considering the circumstances - you can tell the parts were individually recorded, but the overall effect is very good. Thanks for sharing!

There's also the idea of having everyone compose a piece based on the same short (or not so short) melody.

I was reading the ideas. Many of them I think can be considered to fall under the broad term "programme music". I think that not everyone has the talent or even the interest to compose that type of music. I hope that the competitions can be less restrictive in that sense, and to therefore appeal to a broader range of potential participants. One way to do that would be to, instead of providing themes (in the sense of "programme music", not musical themes), providing limits like the instrument to compose for, the number of bars, a sequence of notes to expand on, a key to compose in, an unusual combination of instruments to compose for, a rhythmical sequence to employ, etc. I encourage others to add to this list of "restrictive" rather than "programme music"-al ideas for a competition. If I come up with more ideas, I will add them as further suggestions.

Hi all, So, I've been away from this site for a few years - long enough that I find it has changed and my profile is completely empty! It's time to change that. In February, I had the opportunity to perform a recital of my own works, this trio among them. My colleagues and I decided afterwards that it would be worth the trouble to do a house recording of it. This is the result. My personal musical preferences lie squarely in the conservative German branch of the 19th century, and I've always believed that a composer should write the sort of music he or she likes to hear. That's what you can expect from this trio with respect to form, harmony, rhythm, and so forth. It's in four movements. The first movement is a traditional sonata-allegro with slow introduction. The second movement is a scherzo and trio. The third is a theme and variations, based on a melody I wrote when I was 13 or 14 (side note - NEVER throw away the ideas you compose when you're young!) The fourth movement is rondo-like arch form. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed performing it! I have decided against posting the score. I hate to have to take this stance, but as an essentially unknown composer, I am deeply reluctant to post my scores to an internet site that is open to the world when I know colleagues who have been victimized by thieves stealing their works and claiming them as their own. Even with a legally copyrighted work, it is stressful, time-consuming, and expensive to take these people to court. I apologize to those who would have liked to see it.

One of the themes could be to write something about an ancient culture such as the Aztecs, the Mayans, or the Egyptians (although I know that last one is done a lot).