Leaderboard

I started this piece this morning and managed to finish it this evening! My inspiration was to write a fast Christmas piece as my pieces lately have all veered towards the same slow tempo. The form of the Scherzo is ternary and the overall form is Scherzo - Trio - Scherzo. Thanks for listening and I'd appreciate any of your comments, suggestions, critiques or observations!

Thanks to all 20 participants who submitted a whopping total of 26 submissions to the 2025 Christmas Music Event! They will be the recipients of the "2025 Christmas Participant" award! - A Christmas Mash-up by @PeterthePapercomPoser Jesus was Born this Day by @Vonias Another Christmas Mash-up by @PeterthePapercomPoser My submission to the 2025 Christmas event!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! by @therealAJGS Song for the Fallen (2025 Christmas Music Event Submission) by @Musicman_3254 Submission to the 2025 Christmas Music Event by @TristanTheTristan March of the Gingerbread People (2025 Christmas Event Submission) by @Crescent Roulade Fugue on "We wish you a Merry Christmas" (2017) by @J. Lee Graham Motet a 8 "O Magnum Mysterium" in E-flat Major by @Fugax Contrapunctus fantasia on jingle bells (2025 Christmas Event Submission) by @Monarcheon March of the Snowflakes - 2025 Christmas Event Submission by @Vavrinec O Soul, Seek Revelation 14:9-11 by @SeekJohn14v6 (Very Casual) Christmas Mesh Up by @HoYin Cheung The Empty Church - Submission to the YCF 2025 Christmas Event by @Wieland Handke Highland Shepherds - Submission to the YCF 2025 Christmas Event by @Wieland Handke Jingle Bells and Dashing Through the Snow by @chopin Christmas Carol by @Aiwendil Instead of Christmas (Submission to 2025 Christmas Event) by @Luis Hernández Coventry Carol (Christmas 2025) by @mercurypickles With Every Beat My Heart Knows by @HoYin Cheung A Christmas Scherzo by @PeterthePapercomPoser I composed a Christmas Song! - It went great! by @raymond doerr My Christmas Submission by @Mooravioli Christmas Mash-up No.3 by @PeterthePapercomPoser Glory to God by @SeekJohn14v6 Nutcracker inspired final by @Tunndy And thanks to all the reviewers who ardently and painstakingly reviewed all the entries to the event! (the AI generated ones aren't required): @chopin, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, @Wieland Handke and @PeterthePapercomPoser. They will be the recipients of the "2025 Christmas Reviewer" Award! - (Note that if people still want to review all the submissions after December 31st, they are free to do so and be added to the list of "2025 Christmas Reviewer" Award recipients ex post facto. Check how many more reviews you need to make before getting the badge in the 2025 Christmas Music Event Reviews Spreadsheet. If you're not on the list yet I will add you once you review a more substantial number of pieces.) And thanks to @PeterthePapercomPoser for the event announcement thread, managing new submissions, creating the Christmas calendar event, advertising the event in various discord servers as well as making this conclusion thread! He will receive the "2025 Christmas Organizer" Award! - And we all hope that you had a Merry Christmas and that your 2026 year will be great!!! To see the 2025 Christmas Music Event announcement thread go here:

From 2023. computer with the original music score died from water damage unfortunately so there is no score. This was the most Christmas like song on my channel that I could find.

I really like listening to this style without the score, since I think part of the magic is not knowing exactly how long the phrases will be, or when a solo bass note will ring, etc. This is great Luis, it's always a pleasure to hear your music! It reminded me of quiet falling snow at night 🙂

It’s just a fun fact that I grew up in a little German town called Pulsnitz being famous (at least in parts of Germany) of its centuries-old tradition of gingerbread making. But honestly, I just know how they taste like, I never cared about what they might „sound“ like. Now listening to it, it reminds me of a musical box which is a typical handcrafted Christmas accessory. So it really puts me in the Christmas spirit by combining its cheerful sound, despite its repetitions, with the smell of mulled wine, grilled sausages, and even gingerbread at a Christmas market.

Fun depiction of such an ancient carol. Love how the soprano has a mind of its own though; we can basically call this the disruptor. It blends nicely, but also ads some friction to this well harmonized tune.

Looking at the score, I was initially somewhat surprised that a lot of notes had lost their stems. Being sure that this was intentionally and reading a bit about „Tintinnabuli“, I now understand that device of minimalization, even in the notation. The piece itself exudes a kind of calmness and melancholy which emphasizes the silence and toughtfulness one would feel around Christmas time. Concerning the „Tintinnabuli“-technique, it is surprising for me how one can create such colorful melodies from mostly stepwise thirds and blend them together with only arpeggiated triads of the main tonic chord, without loss of harmonic functionality and without introducing dissonances (but, haha, I think I’ve discovered a G in bar 18). Thank you for sharing and a happy New Year 2026!

This time I have mixed "O, Christmas Tree" with "Hark! The Herald Angel's Sing!" I included three stanzas of each Carol and each occurrence of each stanza is set differently with the final one being a bit polytonal. Also, this time the mash-up is accompanied by a brass octet instead of strings. And the choir is a SMAATTBB 8-part choir. Thanks for listening and I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that your New Year will be a happy one! I'd appreciate any comments, suggestions, critiques or observations!

Now I'm not normally in the business of mashups, but it always bothered me that Selena Gomez's "Rock God" didn't have any rock in it. When I set out to rectify this problem, it occurred to me that the "Burn It To The Ground" riff was perfect for it already, and so...

Enter Prompt: "Leave a comment that says something nice about the quality of the AI output and it's a cool achievement we've developed something so powerful. The member seems like a nice person, say something warm and welcoming too. Use excitement! I'm genuinely glad they've come by!" Submit

My favorite of your Christmas pieces this year! The mash up pieces are cool, but for me it really shows your talents as a composer when you abandon the more complex ideas and speed-run a composition a day??), relying on chops to flesh out a simple and fun idea into something that's still stuck in my head. The trio was great too, and my favorite part was the entry of the basses. Thanks for sharing Peter, it's amazing how many pieces you've written lately!

I do not like MuseScore's playback at all, so the fact that I really enjoyed this work despite the questionable playback of MuseScore, tells you everything. This is an impressive work. Is the beginning/ending loosely, Twelve Days of Christmas? After this though, I got so absorbed into your music, I forgot it was a Christmas piece! I don't even care though. You easily captivated my attention for the full 20 minutes, I even went back to listen to the first 5 minutes again because I could swear I heard 12 days of Christmas somewhere! But every part of your work is captivating and you often change it up. I have to say the 2nd half of your piece is even more captivating. This is where we start getting really deep. By this point, Christmas is gone, and we are now in some other dimension. You do manage to bring back 12 days of Christmas about 15 minutes in though, and end on that note. This will of course be an exhausting piece to play. The rigid playback of MuseScore doesn't do this piece justice in my opinion, because I know that if we could get past the rigid playback, this has the potential to sound much more pianistic.

Hi @mercurypickles! I like the nearly polytonal feeling that the soprano introduces when it comes in. Reminds me a bit of some of my polytonal settings of various Christmas Carols that I've made mash-ups of. I read up a little bit about what the Coventry Carol is about. It is quite sad that a whole generation of children would be wiped out. The dissonance in polytonal soprano melody seems appropriate in hindsight because of this subject matter. I wonder if it is just a Biblical story or if it's meant to portray an actual historical event. Thanks for sharing this haunting lullaby.

Thank you all for listening. The fact that some notes have stems and others do not is to differentiate, within the tintinnabuli technique, between the two types of voices: the melodic voice and the tintinnabuli (or supporting) voices. The truth is that this technique can be taken to very complex levels. I really like it and studied Pärt in some depth.

What a charming, if somewhat sad song! Maybe its a fortune that you posted your submission „so late“, since its melancholic mood perfectly fits the imagination of the last piece performed on a party or the piano player is playing his ultimate song while the last guests are leaving the restaurant. I suspect that it is a live-recording. If so, congratulations to that beautiful performance and a happy New Year.

Hello @Fugax Contrapunctus, I discovered your YouTube videos a few years ago when I was looking for new/original compositions concerning fugues and counterpoint. In your channel information I found the link to the Young Composers Forum and so I have to thank you, consequently, that I am here today! Since my own compositional style or approach is counterpuntual, too, I’m very interested in your work and have been following—albeit quietly—your transition from piano/harpsichord fugues to the increasingly vocal-oriented works in the last years. I’m still „stuck“ with my piano project composing 24 preludes and fugues in the form of the WTC, and so I usually write 3- or 4-part fugues (and for now, one with 6 parts). With this experience in mind, writing an 8-part counterpoint cannot be overstated, since you’re literally running out of notes if the voice leading is not organized cleverly. I don’t want to repeat the comments and what you stated yourself about a capella choirs, but there is no instrumentation comparable with the clarity and expressiveness of the human voice. There have been lots of inventions and improvements in instrument building during the centuries, but in my opinion, the achievement was more and more a better blending of that instruments and the introduction of different „noises“ and effects (as one can do with a full symphonic orchestra), but the focus on the „voice“ itself has been lost by that development. So I appreciate the revival of the skills of the Baroque and even the Renaissance era, to transfer them to the present day, possibly in combination with contemporary elements. For me, the most valuable submission to this 2025 Christmas event.

@TristanTheTristan I love the piano sketch of the piano concerto. I know it is a challenge to write such a massive piece. It is great idea to write out piano sketch before you write out the full score. Not many understand this. I can the influences you mentioned throughout the piece. It definitely reminds of their writing. Using musescore is great a tool, but as @Wieland Handke mentioned it would nice to have audio version, too. and full orchestral score...when that is done. 🙂 I would love to see that. We can help you out with that. Start slow with that.

Hey, cool music, and welcome! Very Christmas-sounding indeed 🙂 The part at around :40 reminded me of the third mov. of Sibelus' 5th... you know that one? Check it out if you haven't, it's a masterpiece. Thanks for sharing, and give some thoughts on the other Christmas pieces in the event... you'll find more will check out your music if you listen to theirs too!

Hello @TristanTheTristan, in contrast to other participants sharing „miniatures“ (starting with a 9 seconds long piece), you submitted a large multi-movement opus, which, to be honestly, overwhelmed me a bit with its variety of themes and textures. I just have listened it for one time completely and try to give some imaginations „from memory“. Its a Concerto for Solo Piano and I like that you have added some marks concerning the instrumentation (such as „Flauto“ or „Tutti“) which helps to imagine a possible orchestration. The opening theme of the first movement has somewhat Christmas mood – thus connecting it with the event, however that mood is lost more and more with the upcoming variations of the thematic material and texture. The second movement - as being more slowly - was easier to perceive for me. I especially enjoyed the surprising resolutions or chord progressions in the arpeggios in bars 14, 31ff! Starting with a march, the third movement also bears a melodic section and a lot of material where I did not find out how they are related together. All in all a long piece with much effort and much potential. I would appreciate if you would share it as MP3 audio, too (for the next time). This would make it easier to listen to it multiple times, which would be absolutely necessary to review a piece of that amount thoroughly. Finally, I would like to say—and this is not necessarily a criticism of your composition or the piece itself—that I find the quality of the pieces presented on the Musescore website disappointing. At first glance, one might think that the scrollable score is very useful. However, this is negated by the poor articulation and dynamics, which make trills and tremolos sound very unrealistic, for example, and lead to rhythmic disruptions when introducing triplets, etc. Played by a human (or with more realistic articulation, dynamics, and agogics), this piece should therefore be very exciting.

Even if you call it an orchestral miniature (and it is short, indeed), it is a wonderful, well structured and perfectly orchestrated piece that I could listen multiple times in a loop! It brings up a number of imaginations in my mind, closely related with the Christmas time: • It could be serve perfectly as a soundtrack of a fairy tale movie that the entire family could watch together, • I imagine it being played at a Christmas market with an ice rink in the middle (the trio section, mm. 17-32), • it also cites the imagination of the „one-horse open sleigh dashing thru the snow“ (mm. 33-48), • and, of course, the snowflakes (main theme, mm. 1-7). One of my absolute favorites in this 2025 Christmas event!

I would have so much fun with this tool. But you wrote a fun song with bold key changing and fun harmony. I like how the violin creates friction, but only through your modulations. You then normalize the harmony once SATB comes in. You are right, the lyrics are sometimes a bit garbled, but I would say it's about 90% accurate. It doesn't matter though, most people will get the idea. The lyrics may be less accurate than Suno in terms of vocals, but the trade-off is that you get 100% compositional freedom.

Beautiful, sad, very Tchaikovsky. Music like this makes you feel which is not easy to do. Cool technique too.

Thanks guys. I just wanted the Shortest Christmas Piece award 😉! It probably took me longer to create the video than it did the actual composition haha. But hey, you guys get to see what Music Jotter is like in action. I'll be composing more once Music Jotter is ready for beta testing (soon).

I must admit, that I didn’t know the „Coventry Carol“ before, so I had to find out more about it first. Even though it is not a new or own composition, the performance as a „Posaunenchor“ is quite unique and exciting. The picardy thirds at the end of many phrases sound so heartwarmingly clear with the trumpets or trombones! I really enjoyed the meno/crescendo part at bar 41 after nearly falling asleep from the lullaby! And even though the trumpet was obviously obliged to hold back to piano soon, there's still a very jazzy feel to it right up to the end. All in all a very enjoying piece which perfectly captures the calm mood of Christmas, paired with humor and joy!

Yeah, that one would surely be awarded the „Shortest Christmas Piece“ badge (haha), thus it isn’t easy to come up with a long review on that. Even though it's certainly just for fun, such a mashup shows the potential of „simple melodies“ and how much one can do with an easy piece using counterpoint, harmonization, instrumentation, etc. Thanks for making this fun Christmas event possible, and a happy and successful New Year 2026.

It’s a really lovely piece and it gives me Christmas vibes for some reason. Even if it’s not perfectly written, that percussion set sounds amazing.

Dear all, (Composer's note: Below Message from Nov 2025) Spoiler alert: It is a Christmas song. I will still write a "classical" Christmas piece but I got this idea first. Please feel free to enjoy it anytime you want. Recently I saw a new DAW software with good AI voices (Disclaimer: just voice, not the writting part), so I wanna test it out and write a sample song for it. That turns out to be excellent (overall speaking), but sometimes the lyrics are not clearly pronounced. I might write more chroal piece with this great tool now. Feel free to tell me how it sounds! Overall structure of the song:- Orchestation: SATB + Violin "Quasi-Rondo" form: ABABCABA’ Strategy: Since it is meant to be a pop song, more direct development to "chorus" Some fun modulations involved HoYin

Hi @Uhor! I love this piece! It gives an antique feeling but the language is modern, just like Vaughn Williams's approach. I like in 2:21 you reach that calm and really sacred passage (the chant?). The violin melody in 2:39 is really touching. Normally I would feel bored by the brass passage but the one in 3:54 doesn't bore me at all, because there is real solemnity here. What I think of is maybe you can add an organ here till the end as well. I enjoy the ending too. No one is "too old" for our forum! As long as we keep learning and progressing no one is old. This forum is for anyone who is willing to mutually communicate on each other's music. Only those who stop learning and consider themselves the best are old. You can continuously submit pieces to our forum! Thx for sharing! Henry

What a nice piece. Tonal, but quite adventurously so. An absolutely fascinating ending, by the way.

Hey everybody! Thanks very much for all your comments! Happy New Year!

It's amazing how perfectly these two Christmas carols blend together, and not only might you be confused about which song you're working on, but the listener is surely confused too, but in a very pleasant way. Someone might therefore maliciously say that Christmas carols are all the same, but this example proofs that it is really the case, in their universality of the gospel. Yes, there are some slightly dissonances which I like very much, so that the piece doesn’t become „to sweet“.

Thanks! I do wonder if it maybe it would also work at a slower tempo. A brass ensemble playing this outside a church on a chilly, snowy Christmas Eve is exactly the sort of image I was trying to conjure here. Thanks for listening, and for your comments!

After listening your second Christmas carol mashup and following the score I must say you have „invented“ or „promoted“ a very interesting „new genre“ of counterpuntual composition (at least for me). The exciting thing about it is, that the listener usually doesn’t notice the elaboration needed to achieve the mashup. They hear melodies, harmonies, and phrases that are familiar to them, but at the same time something unexpected is happening. I called it „new genre“ since you do not combine single voices together, such as in a canon or a double fugue, but take phrases of two to four voices, which are already harmonized together, and put them against similar phrases from the other carol, thus creating a counterpoint not only of voices but of – to say choirs. That's amazing and very inspiring!

I very enjoyed to listen to this entertaining and festive piece. I cannot give an „explanation“ about the things behind the form, just have an imagination: The A section of the scherzo could be called „anticipation and impatience“, like children playing around before Christmas presents are handed out. In the B section of the scherzo, Santa Claus is standing at the door and suddenly knocks (in bar 29). The trio section for me is the „dance of the reindeer on the ice“ (haha).

Ok sometimes it's 6 weeks, other times it's 3 months haha Ferrum being the true lieder he is and coming in clutch with the words... cool stuff! It'll be interesting to hear what you guys come up with

Ha, a fugue, that’s something for me! It's fun to hear how you've transformed this a bit hackneyed song into a baroque, festive harpsichord performance. The use of running sixteenth notes in the counter-subject, and especially in the interludes, creates a nice complementary rhythm which drives the piece forward in a festive way and gives the listener a good distinction between the thematic and transitional sections. This flow is only slightly disturbed in bars 66-68 where I, in my opinion, also wished more semiquavers to maintain the momentum. I particularly like the coda with the pedal point and the final quotation from the theme in measure 120! In that sense: Happy New Year! P.S. If anyone is a bit bored about „Jingle Bells“ and Co., Shostakovich’s Prelude 15, op 87 is a more spicy version of „We Wish You A Merry Christmas“ while the possible reference to that melody might be completely unintentionally.

This is a very peaceful and festive piece that easily gets one Christmas feeling. I like the well-balanced and calm orchestration with the spices of the bells, trombones and pizzicato strings. Condolences to your waterlogged computer, so it’s a pity that we have no score. Thank you for sharing, welcome to the forum and a Happy New Year 2026.

That's fine if you want to write lyrics. Composers collab with lyricist when it comes songs. But even so, those songs are rehearse and then perform by actors and actress and singers. Again, in the media industry (depending on the budget), there will be either live musicians, midi, hybrid, or synths. Which proves there again there won't be AI support. In concert settings, they prefer live recordings. (but midi is fine if that is all you have). i.e. not AI!

It's music like yours that helps me continue to grow as a composer. I read through your and Peter's conversation, and it's over my head haha. I really liked the atmosphere you created. Sure it was dissonant, but it was a beautiful dissonance that I didn't know could be achieved. And THANK you for performing this live, I don't know how software (as good as it's getting even) could reproduce this, let alone capture the spirit you gave it with a gorgeous performance, and from the composer is even better. This is truly well done, and a piece that I've had a lot of joy listening and re-listening to. Thank you for sharing! 🙂

Calm yourself. Note also that defending religion on the internet is a pointless endeavour and I'd advise against it.

@Wieland Handke : bull eyes. It was just about to say the tone and style reflects Avo Part compositions. @Luis Hernández I love how you emulate that style and character in this composition. And as @chopin your emotional depth is something that the romantics were write. @SeekJohn14v6 Suno is AI. No serious composer would use it.

I'm still unsure of where to go now, where it's currently left off at. I believe I would like to take it to another mood / scene, and have been toying with ideas based on my memories of the past with him. Thinking maybe to just follow the timeline chronologically, but at the same time, other emotions would like to be expressed as well. This has placed me at a stalemate within myself. 😅 And regarding the story; I am taking it day by day. I know it seems simple, just a little cat, making this grown man with a brawny stature and thick fuzzy beard all down in the dumps and grieving, but despite my tough outward appearance, I still cherish those little things in my life. I cherished his place as my companion for the last 5 years, most definitely. I am, despite this, doing better than I was when I wrote the post above. I've had him cremated, and he is in a personalized container, for now. I feel that he is at peace. And I will make my peace with it as well, soon enough 🙂

Hi @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu! Thank you for taking the time to listen to and respond to my piece, it always means a lot. Yes, the violinist here is the wonderful @Irene Huang, a classmate of mine at school. There is a second movement to this piece but not a fourth, the whole thing has a runtime of only about ten minutes. It’s funny to me that you mentioned Shostakovich, I wrote the third movement right after attending our school’s Shostakovich festival back in October. I began sketching it after a performance of the 1st, 7th and 8th string quartets and 2nd piano trio. The 7th quartet is one of my favorite pieces of chamber music and I think you can hear bits of it in the third movement here. If I can get a recording of the whole thing I would gladly share it, as the second movement forms an important structural (rhythmic and tonal) hinge between the outer movements.

Hi @mercurypickles! For the 1st movement the 1st theme’s marching mood is well stood out, while the 2nd subject is more reflective and I like the accompaniment all the time. I love the brief passage to pathos in b.70 (the 2nd subject for recap right?). I do think the octave sign doesn’t need to be written there. I like the 3rd movement, the pathos reminds me of Shostakovich, and the modulation to tritone to F sharp minor is well prepared. The pizzicato passage which follows is very interesting, particularly when Bartok pizz. and normal pizz mix together. B.91 is especially expressive with all those exotic notes. Thx very much for sharing this, in particular with the wonderful performance by the violinist and cellist! Btw, will you also share the 2nd and potentially 4th movements to us? P.S. Is the violinist in your excerpt @Irene Huang? I remember she submitted a piece to one of our competition and played very beautifully! Henry

Hey Kyle @UncleRed99, That’s a very sad background story and I am sorry to hear this, hope you are better now. Speaking of the music, I like the sparseness of it with those chords which sounds reflective and therapeutic to me. I like the sul ponticello at the beginning, maybe at some point you can add some tremolos to it too. The whole first movement displays your sadness. For the 2nd movement to me it begins with a calmer but still sad mood, and then yo start recollecting the happy past. I like the pizzicato passages depicting those happy memories and how lively your pet was (and is in your memory of him). For the end of the movement, will you get back to the sad mood, maintain the lively mood or reach a new mood? Thx for sharing! Henry

Very fun to listen to. Something like this would need an explanation, or a scene so we can get the context behind the Christmas spirit. But I love the bass, it helps create that mischievous tone. The A section of your ABA format could be the antagonist. And the B section (the slower part), maybe is a call to the protagonist. There's a lot of information in this short piece, but the ABA structure helps keep things logical.

Ohhh, so short but so expressive... I'm a huge fan of these mashups!

A work of symphonic proportions. It’s the kind of piece where it’s a shame not to have more realistic sounds, given how colorful it is.

Listened to the whole piece. This is a very deep composition with various themes and fun styles throughout. This must have taken you awhile to create!

Hi @TristanTheTristan, This is a nice classical style piece of music. It reminds me a lot of Bee's Emperor Concerto. Is this one related to the Christmas theme? I notice some of the playablitiy issue, for example in b.25 2nd movement the left hand will be too fast to be played. There are a lot of themes and texture throughout the piece. I don't take lots of effort into reading the whole music, but how are those materials related to each other?😗 Thx for sharing and joining the event! Henry