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Are you asking about real emotions of the sort you would feel apart from any musical matters? Sing a song in such a way that you feel the same emotions that you would feel if a dear friend had died. Thankfully I do not have that ability. Why would anyone want to do that anyway, to feel the sadness not as a result of a specific death but only as a reaction to a song about it? I think it would be very difficult for anyone to do that and yet sing we do and often and sometimes about the death of friends. So I conclude that at such times of singing we are not tapping into emotions but instead into our ability to realize their existence, to give us insight into our very existence as living beings. Perhaps this is putting to fine a point on things, its just that I like to know what I am dealing with.

On the first point I am not so qualified to speak as I have not constructed, discovered and/or composed many groupings of tones into combinations that might be called music but I will say that I cannot ever remember myself specifically deciding on something that I want to say or communicate in a piece of music. Perhaps the reason for that is that anything I have done has not really been thought of or planned in advance, the process is more like discover what I can about the current state of the combinations and then decide what to do next. Taking this in comparison to wanting to "say" something in words and it would be me saying "i want to communicate with on some level but i have no specific thoughts in mind, you are going to have to wait until i come up with something" a process that is ridiculous as far as using words is concerned but which can work for music. So I am living proof that a composer, if composer I actually be, can compose without any thought of their labor's eventual effect. I do not claim the appellation of composer so no answer to these issue likely resides in me. BTW, I admire your ability to discuss tone sound combinations in detailed and descriptive words and I enjoy reading and thinking about these topics but sometimes it becomes too much, my brain cant latch onto music as language, language as music, etc About composer's reactions to their work, a composer who gets upset at words that are not so appreciative might take that as a direct cut at their musical or self worth or they may not consider that an affront at all but maybe only that in such a situation they had failed at communicating

haha, I even spent some time adding all the slurs before posting the piece here 🙂 thanks! I guess it shows that I'm a pianist. That was really helpful, thanks again!

Your ending sounds like a half-cadence probably because of the Gb in the oboe near the end. To counteract that you could maybe get rid of that Gb and replace it with a G natural or end on a Db major chord after a short pause after your current last measure. That wouldn't be very traditional of your fugue to do that but it's a common macro-tonal scheme to have the keys of a piece roughly follow the format of an authentic cadence. Overall I think this is a pretty cool fugue although I wish you had a middle entry of the subject in a key other than the tonic or dominant although I like how you invert the subject in the second half. Your developmental episodes are also pretty well conceived and satisfyingly chromatic! Great job although I wish this were longer and you could bring more individuality to the construction of your subject.

Thanks for the feedback! I also like Gathering Leaves the most out of the four movements, and I certainly understand how the virtual playback isn't as pleasing to listen to. Best wishes

Yeah, I'm gonna stir the pot as I always do in these sort of questions but it's just being honest The goal of a composition is the same of all art: To create something beautiful and great. Rivaling nature and worthy of a God. A secondary goal would be to musically embody some sort of thematic concept or environment. For example, if my goal is to write a sweeping, romantic desert piece, but it fails to convince the listener of this idea, then it has failed in this regard. It's only excusable to fail at the secondary goal provided your not writing to accompany a film or something, but never the first. Everyone who knows me knows that I not only don't accept, but am openly hostile to modernist conceptions of music, art and architecture which instead argue that the goal of these things is to "say something"; i.e., propagandize. Abstract conceptualism which uses political or philosophical "meaning" allegedly reflected by the piece as being more important than the piece itself and certainly more than the actual quality or aesthetics since those things are rejected as "oppressive" by modernists. Which leads me to... Because they're lying. What they were hoping for is that you would gush over their work, but instead pointed out flaws with it. Why do they lash out? Simple, and this is the most taboo subject in the world right now: They're totally brainwashed by the "equality" religion. They simply cannot accept that they are not as good as someone else in some regard. Everywhere you go, at least in the West today, everyone believes in "equality" in all things and people and that everyone is a blank-slate individual all equally-capable. People who have not been indoctrinated by this simply do not believe it. It is not an organic belief. Which is why no person who hasn't been indoctrinated by it genuinely believes that Kandinsky was good a painter as H.J. Draper. When someone gets mad at you pointing out that their melody is incoherent, doesn't work with their chord choices, and the lines are too stale because of lack of vibrato or whatever, the reason they are made is because you have claimed that their piece is inferior to others. That they are not "equal". and you know what? People who are superior, and know that they are, tend to be the most humble and helpful. Musicians and composers who were and are better than I, were only ever helpful to me but every guy making avant-garde noise music that sounded dated in '95 is SURE that I'm a d*ck who doesn't know what he's talking about when I say that music that sounds musical is indeed better than music that doesn't. I have never had a beautiful woman, or attractive people in general be rude to me — but every wicked witch of the west happened to also look like one...and insist they should be "models" too. I think you get the idea. It's the people who don't believe in equality that allow themselves to become the best can be at any given thing, because if you believe everything is equal by default, then you do not believe there is room for improvement...and improve they never shall.

Great job! For me there's a little too much unison and homophony, with the lines in much the same rhythm throughout - perhaps more of an imitative texture near the end, with overlapping groups of three quavers? Or a canonic texture with one trumpet starting its line and the other picking up at the octave or a different starting pitch altogether. I love the stuff from b.25 onwards, reminds me of Copland (whose music is bae). I play trumpet myself and would enjoy recording the 2nd part (the 1st part is too damn high for me, but a professional would have little trouble, unless the score is at concert pitch, in which case the top B becomes a more troublesome top C# 😉 Thanks for posting