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My first concerto and one of my first orchestral pieces. I've written it in about 2 months, in a hurry to finish before my 16th birthday. The concerto is in romantic style and B flat major. It has four movements: I. Allegro moderato - sonata form, orchestra: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. (There is a cadenza before the coda for the soloist to write) II. Largo - ternary form, addition of english horn, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, +2 horns, 2 tenor trombones, 1 bass trombone and 1 tuba, harp, bass drum, triangle, cymbal. (In G minor) III. Scherzo - ternary form, 3/4 time, addition of the piccolo. Intended to sound like a Brazilian choro. (In F major) IV. Finale - rondo form, 12/8 time, addition of snare drum. I'm having some trouble achieving a greater visibility for my work. If anyone knows about competitions or something similar that would accept this style of composition I'd be very happy. As always, any feedback is appreciated!

Once again blah blah blah Henry blah blah blah he's amazing blah blah blah friggin Henry blah blah blah updated mp3 of Henry blah blah blah thanks my guy, you rock and all that @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu 💋

Hello This is the third part of the orchestral suite, although I am not at all sure it is a suite, but rather single works. I'll have to listen to them in one go to see if they add up for me. In fact in this last part there are some things that are more advanced in stylistic time. It consists of the following parts: A1 Theme in Gm B1 Chromatic sequence from Gm to Amaj A2 Theme in Dm C1 and C2 Intermediate part polyrhythmic! B2 Chromatic Sequence from Fm to Gmaj D1 and D2 Final Adagietto in G - ending in Emaj The chromatic sequences are inspired by romanticism (Chopin used them a lot). The polyrhythmic part took me a while to get it right in the editor, but when something gets stuck in my head... It sounds quite impressionistic, to me. Anyway, if it makes someone spend a few pleasant minutes, that's fine. I didn't want to make something long, or repeat the same parts, which I don't like at all.

Nice variations and harmonic changes. It gives you a dramatic sense that while you are in space and in a state of desperation, which when the drums kick in and when the tempo picks up the climax of desperation reaches its peak, in the end something pleasant is going to happen. Nice work!

I've always feared someone would spot a counterpoint error somewhere in my music that I didn't notice. Oh, the horror of hidden parallel fifths! 😱 I think your advice has been a great help to me so far! I'm beginning to look at my piece just that little bit more analytically, and only now am I noticing the voice leading errors in a lot of different parts of the music (especially around the woodwind/brass chorale before the recap; I feel there's enough voice-leading mistakes there to give Mahler another stroke had he been alive to see it). I'll follow your advice on a lot of the parts; I'll have to consider which of the mistakes I'd rather keep deliberate, though, because I quite like the sound of my piece as it is (even if I do prefer it being improved upon in a technical sense). I might look at some of the sections you pointed out, and put something else in its place; no matter which way you phrase it, a parallel fifth is a parallel fifth, and I'd rather not have something like that in my piece! A question: I read on Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration (and watched subsequent explanations on YouTube) that a lot of instruments have a 'sweet-spot' in a given range; an oboe might sound a certain way around the mid-high register that is preferred among composers, but this obviously leads to the question of whether or not we should be keeping to this rule at all. Should 'sweet-spot' registers play a greater importance than voice leading in symphonic writing? If so, in which situations should voice leading be more important? (a cheeky couple of @s here: I could really use your opinions, @Luis Hernández and @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu! 🙏) I honestly didn't know that! I never bothered to look at timpani ranges, and I've always been pretty lax with how I write for timpani. All I understood I should do was keep the range of the playing in my music somewhere below Eb and somewhere above low C, because the upper registers have always lacked that bass sound that I want from timpani. I'll work on it and see what I can fix. Thanks for that! Good to know I managed to do something right 😉 This was more than helpful - without your advice, I'd have never noticed these mistakes. It takes a lot of painful rewriting of one's music to get to a level of mere competence (especially those of the symphonic sort), and I'm lucky to get a headstart thanks to you! 👍👍

Wohow this is so nice!! I love the way you orchestrated this. And well, it's itself quite a lovely piece.

Hello, ludeart. Long time 🙂 So as for this Caprice I will give you some feedback in hopes you would improve and become more flexible in this variation form. 1. Thematic material I think you got better overall in that regard, but here it is like you start of from the middle of the theme. Theme is a story in its own, and like every story it has statement, development, answer to the initial statement, culmination, ending. You seem to start from the answer. Why do I feel that? Because you start to introduce sequences right from the start, but sequences is only a form of developing an already established theme or motif. So my opinion is that you should heavily work on that. Because Theme is like a main hero. If your story lacks a good developed main hero, no one will care about the story. You can work with this by looking at 24th Paganini Caprice and studying how he does his theme. 2. Variations Variations are fine, there is not much to it, because of how short the piece is, and you simply don't give yourself time to execute all of the violin techniques which you would place in a caprice. 3. How long the piece is. Well it's very short. I can translate your story as this: "There is an old man, who knows how to do everything. He does smithing, he loves his wife. He lives happily. The end." The whole thing just wants a question: "So what?" And partially that is because you don't give yourself time to develop anything you do in the composition, which is bad for you as a composer, and bad for listener as they doesn't care. So I hope you will follow more Paganini's 24th Caprice in the future, maybe even locking yourself to releasing your composition until you hit 5 minute mark, so you can develop everything in your piece to the maximum. Also do a thematic exercises every day. Try to write a theme (theme is a nicely developed motif, don't forget) and see how it affects you on its own and then when you are capable of writing such bright and interesting themes, you can go on and try to implement them in variations to develop it even further. Looking forward to your progress 🙂

Hi Pabio @Fugax Contrapunctus, Yeah I can tell the fugue is the earlier piece, since it's filled with compact counterpoint without some rests on certain parts haha. And also your favorite tonic and dominant pedal appears too! For me I don't feel like the prelude romantic as Luis noted. I feel like it's a normal invention with the subject going everywhere. I like your prelude more in terms of style, but the counterpoint in both movements are as great as usual for your standard. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hello I think you do an impressive job with the counterpoint.... Comment that, in this case, it seems to me that the prelude and the fugue are a bit "disconnected". The prelude, or its subject matter, sounds more like a romantic work, albeit passed through the flowery counterpoint. The fugue is more of a total fugue style. The prelude begins quite clearly and, as I say, with an almost romantic treatment. Then as it develops and the sequences appear it is more identified with baroque.