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Sean!!! I ABSLOUTLEY LOVE THIS!!! It makes me consider this masterpiece in a new light, reflect, FEEL. A very well done orchestration (I like the sound library very much BTW). I might have held back a bit in the first portion for a slower build up-but that's the beauty of music--there is a million ways to do it. Overall the effect is wonderful--to me. I like to think of myself as a purist, but i read a lot of music history/biographies, and I know it was very common for composers to arrange orchestral pieces/chamber pieces for solo piano, or piano for 4 hands-- and other arrangements of various pieces. Mozart arranged Handel's Messiah to "bring it up to date"! Late 19th century composers mucked with Beethoven's 9th---"FIXING" flaws. The list goes on... MUSIC was a living thing---and a thing to MKAE A LIVING FROM! People wanted to play music, to hear music. Composers provided that. IT WAS THEIR JOB! We seem to have forgotten that core role in our era. I know this was a labor of love! And it was time well spent. THANK YOU FOR POSTING IT!!! THANK YOU FOR KEEPING MUSIC "LIVING"!

Good question. I tend to "think" my way through composing, as far as my emotional interaction with the piece's content. I think of that saying Inspiration is for Amateurs!"-- If the great composers all FELT in response to what they were writing, they likely would have been trainwrecks in a few short years. Mozart and Bach were music production MACHINES--and produced profoundly moving pieces of greatly different character, one right behind the other-- thing Mozart's symphony 40 and 41, composed within weeks of one another... Or the requiem composed alongside the Die Zauberflote. After all, composing is difficult---questions of form, phrasing, harmonics... constant judgment and weighing of factors--who has TIME to FEEL!!??? That said, while I'm composing, I feel different things in different phases. Starting, I feel trepidation and doubt--ANXIETY!-- while I work on thematic material, base ideas. However, once that is finished, and I am (hopefully) truly happy with the material, I am very content and cheerful working up a proper piece of music. PROFOUNDLY HAPPY. When finished, I've I've noticed a depression for a day or two. I was interested to read that Brahms and other composers have a tendency to do this too. Makes sense--after all the intense labor and focus, and JOY of MAKING, our babies are born and we have a sort of "post-partum" moment. What should we do with ourselves?? But then the creative urge returns, and it is on to something new....

Ok--- Click-bait! Overrated: 1. Brahms: "The 3 B's"? Really? Bach, Beethoven and BRAHMS? Reading swafford's bio. Yes, a great craftsman. yes, conservative tastes. But.... ******************BOOOOOORING. 2. Bruckner: I actually enjoy the 4th, 7th...but that is not saying he could use an editor. And now and again it has that Vivaldi feeling like he wrote the same symphony 9 times. Seriously. 3. Telemann: Capable. Rarely profound. 4. Liszt: Great Pianist. Not a great composer. Used Joachim Raff to orchestrate a lot of music, before Raff realized he could do his own stuff---and often much better.... But a good man. That counts for something. Underrated: 1. Mendelssohn: (I pretty much had to list him!) The guy wrote what has been called "The perfect symphony"--the Italian--and the Scottish. The violin concerto. A Midsummernight's Dream Overture, The Hebrides overture, 6 excellent string quartets, 2 masterpiece piano trios, the Octet, a significant and exceptional organ repoirtoire, some fine piano music, a masterful violin sonata (the F minor--supressed unitl Menhuin brought it to light in the 1950s) Much of his juvenialia is exceptional as well---the piano quartets, the later string symphonies (At age 12??? REALLY?) Meanwhile, he basically established the core of the standard repoitoire as a conductor, revitalized Bach, and formed the Liepzig Music Conservatory that exists today. Many historians point to his many organizing and playing/conducting duties as sapping his energies and denying us even more masterpieces in his short, productive life. 2. Zelenka-- Far better than Vivaldi, Telemann, and any of a dozen other Baroque hacks--Zelenka wrote counterpoint on par with Bach and was a friend of his. Interesting composing sense. 3. Joachim Raff: Promoted by Mendelssohn, employed by Liszt, and considered the preeminent symphonist in the 1870s 80s, he suffered from living TOO LONG and writing TOO MUCH. Fine compositions in all genres except Opera, I do believe. 4. Ferdinand Ries: Beethoven's student and aide: Wrote fine piano music, Piano quartets, trios, string quartets, concetos and symphonies..Well respected and widely known from 1800 to his death around 1840. Some really excellent stuff. I find he clearly has his own musical voice. I'll leave it at 4. I will say that I storngly disagree that Haydn was equal to Mozart. Haydn himself recognized Mozart's superiority. Haydn was brilliant, and creative, establishing the symphony, string quartet, and evolved over his long life, but he was no Mozart, and his music lacks the grace and intricacy that Mozart could spin off at will.