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Good evening Gospel, I just listened to your arrangement audio along with your sheet music. To be honest, I find the whole piece rather solid. It doesn’t seem solemn as you mentioned: the flute in my listening sounds rather comforting and warm, and the violin adds a nice contrasting timbre. Also, considering you arranged the tune for 2 treble-clef instruments, you were really creative making the most out of your available pitch ranges and adding good harmony and counterpoint. I hope my words help. ~Frank P.S. By the way, what music notation software did you use to create your arrangement?

Hey! Thank you! I really only tried to mimic Mahler in like 2 of the sections, but yes - I am trying to do something different. I do not think this specific piece has room for jokes. You could interpret the loud chirping as a joke, but it is more meant to be something upsetting that is interrupting the pretty melody. I am having fun and feel most called with this work to create something romantically-aligned, but in order for it to be done my way it needs to have this extended harmony. It is the only way I feel I can insert "me" into this type of music faithfully. There is so much more emotion I can convey in any given section by throwing in quarter tones or hiding major chords amongst a pile of oobleck. Like, that final build to the messed up major chord being blasted by the bass instruments is one of my favorite things I have composed, and it works because we expect a major chord to sound a certain way. I think it is amazing how something as simple as lowering a pitch by -25 cents in a major chord can make you completely uneasy. I am definitely actively trying not to be super contemporary in my writing and am working to pay homage to romantic era music. The sweeping lines, bigger focus on counterpoint, and orchestration is really what my push here has been. I appreciate your words of encouragement. Hopefully I will be able to share a more complete version in a few months!

Thanks for the nice words, @GospelPiano12! I am really glad you enjoyed it! I am planning to orchestrate it some day in the future so I have been thinking about possible instrumentation too but I never though about the sax! I think the tenor sax would sound really nice during the main melody of the beginning! Thanks for listening and commenting!