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Have a look at your soprano line. Does it sound like a coherent melody? What do you notice about its range?

Indeed, said modulations are the focal point of this piece, the base material from which its structure was designed and its counterpoint woven. I am unsure, however, on what you mean by "justified and needed by the music/melodic line", since the level of contrapuntal constraints required for a 5-voice setup was main guiding force behind the final resulting contours the melodies took, aside from the proper individual construction thereof. I trust that most professional choirs out there would be able to instinctually find favourably specific moments within the piece to strategically insert breathing commas, such as phrases ending in a half note giving ample space for singers to momentarily stagger their breathing, just as you said. As for the sense of breathless artificiality you mentioned, I suppose it must be a matter o subjective relevance, since it comes off neither as "artificial" nor awkward in any way for me as long as the performing choir can handle it properly, as I hope will be the case under most circumstances. Regardless of our disagreements, I can only thank you for your thoughts, criticism and kind words, as there will most likely always room for improvement in my compositions no matter how hard I try to perfect my technique and integrate all aspects in which I may find myself lacking, so as to get them as closely as possible to second-nature for me and, by extension, my art.

Hi @Fugax Contrapunctus! Nice motet! I think the modulations are smooth although the one in the beginning, to E minor is a bit surprising. I am not sure when listening to this, if the modulations are justified and needed by the music/melodic line, or whether you just included them because it's something that's on your checklist of features you want some of your pieces to have? Something else I noticed, is that there isn't a single rest in the entire piece! LoL - not that there necessarily have to be rests, but it would be expected in a piece for choir where people have to breathe. On the other hand, many singers would be singing this together, so they'd be able to stagger their breathing. But it does lend the piece a sort of breathless artificiality because the phrase once started seems to just keep going and going without any rest. Those are my thoughts. Thanks for sharing this enjoyable piece!

Hey @gmm! Glad to see another iteration of one of your great orchestral works! So I'll just start off with some observations. I scanned your score pretty diligently, and I noticed that you seem to always divide your 5/8 measure into a group of three 8ths followed by a group of two 8ths. To me, this came as a surprise because usually music does not fit so well into a preconceived irregular meter (I would have expected at least one measure somewhere where the group of two 8ths comes first followed by a group of three). Although your long leading melodic lines that float above your 5/8 ostinato riffs surely are somewhat free of meter. The piece is very cinematic to me, with its often very repetitive nature so I will be describing some of the parts of the piece in that kind of context. On the whole this piece definitely comes across as very accessible and easy listening, as per your intention. The groove is catchy and the main focus of the piece as per your goals. I think my 2nd favorite part of the piece is the Piu Allegro sections at E (2:03) and N (5:25). This part sounds almost like a bombastic dance especially towards its end and the euphonium and bassoons especially create a kind of sense of an impending problem for the main characters in the film. The piece sounds deceptively simple but is actually quite complex! This Piu Allegro section especially sounds simple at the beginning when you double all the instruments on the same melodic line, but it is a great way to change the texture in an accessible way and create the ear-worm which is later developed into a more complex fabric. You end the movement on this theme crescendoing into a chaotic cacophony that is still nonetheless accessible and you leave the listener in a cliffhanger which I think was a great way to end the piece. My favorite part is probably the gentle, lyrical wind section at B (1:05) and I (3:58). It might fit an introduction of some kind of really unusual and idiosyncratic character. Just a score nit-pick: do you know if it is possible to export the PDF in a higher resolution? I sometimes can't even tell the difference between quarter-notes and dotted quarters! Overall a wonderous soundscape from you once again! Thanks for sharing!

And another one from an SMW rom hack: Lancer - Deltarune by Toby Fox: