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I am very happy to share my 27th Piano Sonata, written in binary form. The work is written in an Allegro character and explores contrasts between lively, restless passages and more expressive and introspective moments, with changing harmonic colours and a gradual movement towards a quiet and gentle conclusion. I have dedicated this Sonata to my dear friend Henry, as a small expression of my appreciation and admiration for him, both as a composer and, above all, as a friend. It is a great pleasure for me to dedicate one of my works to someone whose music I appreciate and whose friendship I value deeply. The performance is my own, using the J. Weimes Fortepiano (1808) from Pianoteq 9. I hope you enjoy listening to it, and I would be very happy to hear your thoughts and impressions.

Thanks to all 9 participants who submitted music to the competition - the recipients of the "Alchemist Award"! Summer's Day by @Kvothe On Pastel Skies by @Fruit hunter Plus belle encor votre chère beauté by @MK_Piano Your dear beauty lovelier still by @Musicman_3254 Summer – A Song of Beauty and Melancholy by @Wieland Handke Saxophone Quartet no. 2 - Un clair jour d'été by @Ninja Nolan So on a bright Summer Day by @Matthew M Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été by @latebeethoven_addict Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été by @JDevorMusic The members have voted!!! And the winners are ... --==<< Decisive Fanfare >>==-- For winning the "Spirit of Verlaine" Award for the best depiction of Verlaine's poem and the most imaginative transformation of the text into music: with 5 votes, Saxophone Quartet no. 2 - Un clair jour d'été by @Ninja Nolan !!! Congratulations!For winning the "Poème d'Amour" Award for the piece that best captured the sensation of love: with 6 votes, Plus belle encor votre chère beauté by @MK_Piano !!! Congratulations! For winning the "Évocation" Award for the piece that best captured the sensation of summer: with 3 votes, Your dear beauty lovelier still by @Musicman_3254 !!! Congratulations! For winning 3rd place overall with 9 points - We have a tie!!! On Pastel Skies by @Fruit hunter and Summer – A Song of Beauty and Melancholy by @Wieland Handke will both receive the following trophy: For winning 2nd place overall with 16 points - Plus belle encor votre chère beauté by @MK_Piano will receive the following trophy: For winning 1st place overall with 17 points - Saxophone Quartet no. 2 - Un clair jour d'été by @Ninja Nolan will receive the following trophy: Congratulations to all the winners!!! We will now move your pieces to the "Competition Hall of Fame" sub-forum! And thanks to all the following participants who also reviewed all the entries! The contest would not have been as much fun and as instructional as it was without you! The following members will receive the "Heavyweight Reviewer" badge for reviewing 100% of the entries (9) submitted to the competition!@Kvothe @Fruit hunter @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu @chopin @Wieland Handke @Thatguy v2.0 @PeterthePapercomPoser @JDevorMusic And the following members will receive the "Welterweight Reviewer" badge for reviewing 66% of the entries (6) submitted to the competition!@MK_Piano And the following members will receive the "Featherweight Reviewer" badge for reviewing 33% of the entries (3) submitted to the competition!@Luis Hernández @TristanTheTristan @MJFOBOE Thank you to all 12 Ardent Reviewers who reviewed the contest entries! Once again - great reviewing turnout! We had more reviewers than composers in the competition! And thanks for me @PeterthePapercomPoser for organizing and managing all the competition polls, announcements, submission thread, badges, results, satisfaction survey and advertising outreach! I will receive the "Community Organizer" badge! To take the "From Nothing, to Something" Satisfaction Survey go here: To listen to all the entries go to the submission thread: To see the Popular Voting Polls go here: To go to the competition announcement go here:

Hi! Just assessing Henry here, I guess. @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu note that accordionists overall, specially those who are amateur, or just interested in performing, will know as much as any non-player (but musician) of the ways this instrument may be properly engraved. More often than not, as it happens with many other instruments, we "convert" the information to our format on the go. I fear something similar would happen to the piece you've brought to my attention. Now, in regards of the accordion scoring of this PDF I'd say that : RH specified at the beginning of the piece do not match with the provided sounds (LH could, but I'm not certain, it sounds like a Soft Bass and it definitely has no soprano voice sounding in those very first bars that I'm discussing right after this bullet) MMM or MM for the RH are the ones you're looking for, at least judging by the soundfont which appears to be a french musette, so it's either that or open violin register. Note that no registers work for providing thirds neither accordionist spawn them on the go. I'm seeing the working score and I just don't get why there are so many notes that are just not present. Note that not all accordions have these, some 3-voice Piginis and other famous italian concerto accordion brands prefer the dry sound of the harmonium register, LMH. or 4' + 8' + 16'. Your sound is 8'+8' or 8'+8'+8', assuming it's the one you are seeking for. Chord movements by semitones are to be avoided if possible. Otherwise, you'll be inflicting tremendous pain to the accordionist, assuming Stradella system since it's the one you're using. So, without extending myself much, let's just review some examples. These are M15 to M18 if I'm not mistaken. RH register, according to the audio, should be MMM or MM as I mentioned. Bass voice doesn't sound like Soft Tenor but that's minor. What's not minor is that F#dim and Bdim are so far away from each other and from the G7 and C buttons, demanding unneeded agility. Here there's no other option than to briefly discuss voicing. The voicing on standard 6-row stradella accordions with 2 rows of basses and 4 rows of chords is root+m3+7dim (and depending on the register, that can be doubled or tripled in octaves above and below). There's no fifth sound, neither in the 7 button chord, allowing the accordionist to essentially do a Xm6 or a Xº by using the dim button and the proper bass, and some other interesting combinations. And thus, all these red notes are... Not quite accurate, to say the least. According to the register you are using in the score (soft tenor), chords should be an octave higher with the proper voicings. No chord button alone produces more than 3 notes. M/m -> 1-M/m3-5, and for the other two (7, d), you take the 5th. You can find more information about Stradella voicings here in case you be interested in making it right. I have briefly talked about this for a reason, since you're not doing the complete Xº tetrad, the symmetry of chords marked "d" is in principle broken. But since I don't think it's gonna be a problem because the F# is already being played by another instrument, in that excerpt I would change F#º by Cº, which is very close to the G an C chords you're gonna play afterwards, and also, on a similar fashion and by using a similar argument, I would change Bº → Fº. Note that similar occurences happen throghout the whole piece. Finally, there are many register changes that are not reflected in the audio at all. In fact, since the very beginning it's clear that there's no "Clarinet M" sounding, but a French musette. While I can understand the limitations because most usual accordion soundfonts come with musette or in two voices already, there are plenty of incorrect examples. Here I tried to point out some. M26-28. The "Master" register uses 5 voices in the bass buttons, 5 because the contralto doubles the alto voice in half of the octave and the tenor voice in the other half, adding to the previous Soprano (2') + Alto (4') + Tenor (8') + Basso (16'). The website I shared notes C to F in alto and F# to B in tenor, but truth be told, this depends 100% on the manufacturer. On the right hand we got a fair deal of strange stuff too. You write "Musette Imitation", which consists on 2 middle voices (8'+8', one lightly detuned forward, usually) and a voice that's an octave higher. And that's for all notes, not jut for the ones you'd like to double, sorry. What's usually the benefit of changing registers that much in a piece? Little, unless you are Gianfelice Fugazza and you know exactly, and I mean exactly what you're doing, in the context of a pedagogic piece, an étude, an example, or a concerto piece. So I can assure you that with no loss of sound quality or musicality, had you removed all RH register changes and replaced them by an open violin (8'+8') and/or a musette (8'+8'+8') register, the sound would be closer to what the audio depicts and probably to what you were seeking for, since: Accordion, yes! Any accordion? Nein! A French musette accordion, a Cavagnolo, a Mengascini. Not a dry Pigini and if you wanna be just right about the french sound, not even a Hohner would do the trick. Ah, and these are often traditionally button accordions, not keyboard accordions, but you'll find a handful of them too. By doing what I suggested, you'll get rid of difficult/uncomfortable sections. Apart from the chord issues, we'd clean up things like these: Not impossible at all. But if you don't have one of these expensive accordions (that won't sound like French musette) that come with chin switches, you'd better pray these three registers are close enough. And just in case, the other hand is busy handling the bellows. And again, your working score (which I assume you used for the audio) doesn't correctly notate the passage according to the registers of choice. That said, the piece was nice to listen to. Not my turn to evaluate it, and I don't really want to bore you further, but the "Engraving" and "Playability" parts (which are definitely related in my opinion... Something may be possible to perform but its actual playability could be demeaned by its poor engraving) would not get a pass from me, sorry Wieland. I mean: your score frontpage looks very nice, it's original, and imo shows great care for it (though, why does it say 15 of 24 if this is the XXI? Or I'm in the wrong?). So, what happened here? Why none of that permeated into the score itself? Lack of time? Perhaps indolence? Lack of inertia or eagerness cause many may not make use of it for judging? I'm sorry if I'm being hard, but I'm not ill intentioned at all here, I just do not understand. I may not agree with every engraving choice you made in your XXI Praeludium for piano solo but that shows how you could have got a way cleaner score out of this. Or maybe not? If you don't mind, Wieland: what software are you using? Musescore 4? I think this reply is long enough already. I wish you the best for this competition. May you find any of this of help. Best regards, Daniel–Ø.

2. If you didn't submit music to the competition, why not?I just wanted to review this time

Writing for a quartet of all the same instrument (not only the same type or from the same family) can be quite challenging but you managed to bring the most important parts out in high relief in your recording which gave the music focus despite the identical tone colors and close harmonic spacing. This listener was hardly ever in doubt about what to listen for. I think each movement of the piece improves upon the previous. Hence, my favorite is III. The Evening. The melancholic hue of this one is just so full of longing and heartache. It’s also obviously a great depiction of the end of a good day/sunset. The music tells me that we don’t want the day to end yet, that it’s too soon. Overall, this entry is full of ideas and contrasts them and sustains musical interest throughout the entirety of its duration. The live recording is another bonus added on top of an entry with an already excellent execution. As of the writing of this review, I’ve been tasked with recording a 4 movement sonata for solo horn. Your live recording is giving me lots of ideas and inspiration to perhaps record my own horn quartet or horn sonata after I finish this gig. Thanks for your participation and good luck in the polls! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9.5 9.5 10 9.5 9 9.5 9.5 Average Score: 9.44

Please please please be nitpicky, it helps. Not only for the composer, but those reading as well. @Ninja Nolan Kudos for the recording! And also, very cool ensemble. It must have been a challenge for a quartet with instruments of the same range...and same name :D I think this is very cool, and the range and monophonic restrictions breed creativity. AND ALSO, I love the idea of different movements for the stanzas. I feel like this could have been something you wrote before the competition but fit the criteria. Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, very cool and creative piece. I agree with those who said variation in texture could have been beneficial. This to me was conservative in nature, but executed very well. There weren't moments that really "wowed" me, but it's so solid in craft that it hardly matters. You were able to showcase the instrument from your performance, and that means something. Hopefully people interested in soprano sax writing can benefit from your piece in knowledge of the instrument. This really fit the theme of the competition to me, and I enjoyed this thoroughly. Good luck in the voting!

Hi @Ninja Nolan , Lovely writing, you can tell you're also quite the saxophonist in addition to being a composer! Writing a quartet for all of the same instrument is a bold choice. I find this limited sense of timbre/range leads to difficulties when listening to a new piece. However, I didn't feel this way with your writing at all. It showcased the soprano sax well, everything blended quite nicely, and I found the piece to be very successful. Breaking it up into three movements was a smart idea. You did a great job isolating and contemplating the mood of each of Verlaine's stanzas. Also, the French titles for each movement are a nice touch. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9 10 good use of multiple movements 10 10 very fussy with dynamics, but I love it 10 10 9 Average Score: 9.625

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7.5 5.5 9 6 9.5 10 8.75 7.5 Avg: 7.96 Very upbeat piece easily reminds me of a summer afternoon. The intro is a beautiful opening in the classical style, very well done. Clear structure and elegantly formed themes make this a very easy piece to follow. The dynamics or audio balancing need a little work because a lot of your melodies (anything in the treble clef) sound muddled due to the lack of proper balancing. My favorite part aside from the opening, is your key changing at around 2:40. This was a very much needed change because most of your harmony was quite tame. Although the key changing was a fun deviation of your piece, modulations within key can sometimes break the monotony, so don't be afraid to temporarily venture out of key every so often.

Hello dear fellow composers! The two months of the YCF 2026 Summer competition are over and we have now the results. For me, participating in that competition was (again) a great fun – but also a huge challenge! And I think, I’m not alone with that impression, since – on the one hand – only roughly the half of that members which initially intended to participate have finally posted a submission and – on the other hand – the most submissions arrived during the last two weeks, signifying that almost all participants had to do a hard work to meet the requirements of the contest, to produce „Something“, that was related to Paul Verlaine’s poem, from „Nothing“ (in this regard, the specific task made it difficult to use an existing piece; therefore, I believe that most submissions were composed “from scratch”). I’m very pleased, that I could win the third prize, however the most takeaway from the contest are – in my opinion – the reviews which had an outstanding quality this time. It was the fourth consecutive competition (or event) I participated during the past year, and I think the overall quality of the compositions and of the reviews has been improved significantly in that period. The reviews tend to be longer and consist not only of the impression and taste of the listener/reviewer, but have become full of profound feedback and suggestions, concerning for example questions of engraving or of the playability and/or specific characteristics of certain instruments that a composer must take into account, even if he or she may not be very familiar with the one or the other instrument. With this respect, I would especially thank @MK_Piano, @Omicronrg9 and @Thatguy v2.0 for their reviews. I'm already looking forward to the next competition, though to be honest, I need a few weeks' rest until then. Finally, there is just another little concern I would share: I noticed that some of the participants voted for themselves in the final poll. That behavior ultimately had no impact on the awarding of badges and prices in that sense, that a participant has not earned the respective badge due to he did hesitate and not voted for itself. However, in my opinion, it is not a good practice to vote for oneself, since - if everyone would do so - voting would become merely useless, especially since we have relatively few voters at all, and this time more participants than other members. Therefore, I would suggest to introduce an explicit statement in the rules of upcoming competitions, that participants shall not vote for themselves in the final poll.

@Lithl My dear friend, I truly don’t know how else to thank you. Your appreciation, both for me as a person and for my music, genuinely makes me very happy. I’m so glad that you enjoyed this sonata as well, and it means a great deal to me that you took the time to listen to it and share your thoughts. As for my dear friend @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu , I have had the pleasure of considering him a friend for quite some time now. Even though we are separated by distance, we are in touch almost every day and we often talk about music. Above all, there is a deep mutual respect between us, as well as a genuine love for music. Lately, we have been talking quite a lot about Scarlatti. Henry not only loves Scarlatti, but also listens to and performs his music. Since I also have a deep love for Scarlatti, especially his binary sonatas, this shared passion for his music has brought us even closer. And so, I felt the need to dedicate one of my own binary sonatas to him. I’m truly very happy and touched that I had the opportunity to do so.

Ah, I wish I were Henry... You are a lucky man, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, to have such a nice friend who composed music dedicated to you and your musical talent! As for the music itself, I don't even need to say anything because your music always sounds so high-level and lovely. I want to see you play your pieces in the future. Great, thank you for sharing, Vasilis! Best, Lithl.

Hi @MinGry ! Thank you for sharing this piece. I think you’re on the right track, and it’s clear that you’ve been studying composition and working hard to develop your melody and harmony skills. This work shows a lot of thought and care, and I can hear skills that will continue to blossom with practice. I’d like to share a few thoughts that might help you develop this piece and give you some ideas to carry into your next one. My first suggestion is to look at the passages with block chords in the left hand and experiment with more varied accompaniment. You already use some Mozart-style accompaniment, but there are many possibilities beyond that pattern and block chords. Try breaking up the chords, varying the rhythm, or creating flowing, scale-like lines. This could soften some of the heavier chordal passages and give the left hand more personality. It also opens up opportunities for passing tones, neighboring tones, and suspensions. The left hand doesn’t have to simply state the chord of each measure; it can contribute to the character of the music. You could explore all of this while keeping your underlying harmony and right-hand melody intact. That step alone could add quite a bit of oomph to the piece. Another detail to look closely at are the areas where you begin a melody with the fifth of the accompanying chord in the bass. Depending on the context, this can make the music feel less grounded, weaker, than it would with the root in the bass. That doesn’t mean the root always needs to be in the bass. But it’s good to be aware that the fifth in the bass will weaken the strength of any chord. One great place to put the fifth in the bass of the I chord is if the following chord is the V chord. That is a powerful I-V cadence that is used throughout the classical repertoire. My final thought concerns the overall harmonic direction. There’s plenty of appealing melodic material, but at times I feel that the music wanders harmonically, making it harder for the listener to sense where it’s headed. I’d recommend listening to some early Beethoven sonatas (maybe #1 through #15) with this in mind. Your piece doesn’t need to sound like Beethoven, but he offers wonderful examples of how melody, harmony, and form can create a dramatic arc. Tension builds, reaches a peak, and eventually subsides. The listener enjoys the music while also participating in the drama, as if the music is telling a story. Try listening to those sonatas while taking a hike, without looking at the score. Just study the sound first, the vibes. Then pick out some moments that felt especially moving to you, and study how he did it. Explore: how did he use harmony, melody, and accompaniment to construct something dramatic, something with power and direction? See whether you can build tension gradually over several measures in your music, arrive at a climax, linger there long enough to make it meaningful, and then let the tension resolve. In passages that feel a little directionless, that sense of movement toward and away from a goal could give the music more shape. It might also help to set the piece aside for a month and return to it with fresh ears. Listen for moments that feel flat or seem to lose momentum; those could be good places to experiment with accompaniment, harmonic direction, and dramatic pacing. Even if you decide to leave this piece exactly as it is, you’ve still made real progress in your composition journey. You can carry these ideas into your next sonata and keep exploring how a more expressive left hand and a stronger harmonic arc can bring your music to life. These are just my thoughts, and I appreciate the opportunity to listen. I hope you keep composing! Jonathan

My dear @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu , you truly moved me beyond words. The fugue subjects are absolutely beautiful, and the Laments, especially the third one, touched me incredibly deeply. What I admire most is the classical writing — that strict classical style, its clarity and its structure. For me, music written at this level hardly needs any commentary at all, at least in my case. A huge bravo, my dear friend!

[UPDATED - OCT. 2026] The following post was a formal submission for the 2026 Summer Competition: From Nothing, to Something. Below includes a detailed and extensive explanation of the work, both in inspiration and construction. If you wish to skip, the score PDF and Audio will be found at the end. Thanks for viewing this work! [TAKEN FROM SCORE] Plus belle encor votre chère beauté  - Your dear beauty lovelier still Duration: c. 6:08 Written in 2026, Plus belle encor votre chère beauté is a work for piano quartet that evokes summer and the experience of love. It was composed for the “2026 Summer Competition” hosted by The Young Composers Music Forum and is inspired by Paul Verlaine’s poem “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été,” whose opening line may be translated as: “So, on a bright summer day it shall be.” The poem is number nineteen in Verlaine’s collection La Bonne Chanson (The Good Song) Find the French text and translation to the poem here The title of this work is drawn directly from the French text and has similar inspiration as the Gabriel Fauré song from his op. 61 bearing the same name as the Verlaine poem. However, this work takes the title from the fourth line of text, and unlike Fauré, this work is late-romantic in style. The musical inspiration came from two places: Tchaikovsky and his Nutcracker ballet, and a spell of improvisation at the piano. This work was created in late July and early August 2026, and during that time, I was experimenting with modal improvisation, and felt drawn to G-lydian. Specifically, the iv 7 chord you can build and find in Tchaikovsky’s music. However, I did not set the piece into the lydian mode, only hinting at C# to use for predominant and secondary function. It was also around this time I was listening to parts of the Nutcracker, where I felt drawn to the idea of harp-writing, and thus, during a period of improvisation, the foundation of this work came to be. With structure, Plus belle encor votre chère beauté is in ternary (A-B-A’) form and includes an intro and coda. The B-section acts as our development while the outer A-sections are comprised of a smaller AABA form. The principal theme stated in the A-section occurs throughout the work, where it can be heard in the introduction, coda and within the development where the piano states the principal theme in inversion. Lastly, I composed this work following the end of a relationship. In short, this work evokes those unspoken emotions I harbored and the romance I long to have one day. A day where I too can say “Your dear beauty.” (The art on the cover page is Claude Monet's "Woman with a Parasol." A wonderful piece of art!) Comments are welcome, both constructive or positive! If you enjoyed this work, leave a react, and follow my page so you don't miss any new works in the future. It's free and you can always remove it later. Thanks and see you all soon! AUDIO_YourDearBeauty.mp3 SCORE_YourDearBeauty.pdf

I've been working on a piano sonata, and I'd like for this music to be the second movement. This music is based on a poem by Robert Frost: "The west was getting out of gold, the breath of air had died of cold, when shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. In summer when I passed the place I had to stop and lift my face; a bird with an angelic gift was singing in it sweet and swift. No bird was singing in it now. A single leaf was on a bough, and that was all there was to see in going twice around the tree. From my advantage on a hill I judged that such a crystal chill was only adding frost to snow as gilt to gold that wouldn’t show. A brush had left a crooked stroke of what was either cloud or smoke from north to south across the blue; a piercing little star was through." This poem really spoke to me during a time in my life when I was healing from something. It was a time when I had to be patient, not give up, continue to strive for optimism even when prospects remained dreary. It was a time when I was searching for something that used to be there but wasn't there now. Perhaps it would come again. But in that moment all I could do was keep searching for it, keep working. It was as if I was standing on a hill top on a cold, crisp day, looking out over endless miles of fields, trying to make out a little puff of smoke in the distance. This is music about healing. Healing is not pleasant when it’s actually happening. Sure it feels great once it’s done, but the process itself is slow. It requires intense patience, and often comes with pain. So this music isn’t about being healed, but about healing. I know that sometimes my music comes off as slightly strange, as if it can't decide if it is classical or modern. This piece, with all its searching and reaching, really leans into that. I'd really love to hear your feedback. I greatly value any thoughts you'd like to share. ❤️ (This was performed by Edward Cohen) Thank you! Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter.mp3 Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter.pdf

A very vivid, lucid and dramatic piece! I thoroughly enjoyed its textures and unique musical gestures. I found the diverse elements of each of the individual instruments in the piece to be somewhat at odds with the desired topic/theme of the competition though. It is definitely a good idea to have the soprano and tenor sing separately first and then together in the last stanza. But the instrumental parts seem to create an atmosphere of tension and the harmony reminds of music for a horror movie or game such as Metroid. The tremolo Viola part especially reminded me of Super Metroid. And the harmonies between the Soprano and Tenor are often not palatable to a sensation of love or summer. The piece is composed quite well however and with quite a bit of craft! It is very intriguing to listen to and definitely holds my attention from beginning to end. Thank you for your participation and good luck in the polls! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 8 9 10 10 10 3 7 Average Score: 8.13

It’s a beautiful trio consisting of Horn, Violin and Piano. I’m sure it’s already been mentioned that for a chamber work like this the proper score order would be Violin, Horn and then Piano at the bottom. Another thing I’m sure has been mentioned is that you should place double bars at key changes and get rid of redundant key changes. The music has a variety of different textures and not all the instruments are playing all the time with plenty of much needed breaks. The horn’s full range is well utilized. As of the writing of this review I am currently playing horn everyday in preparation of recording a solo horn sonata and I can attest to the playability of your horn part. The solo piano Cantabile section at mm. 25 shows off your ability to write a beautiful melody and dress it up through variations in the Violin. The I 6/4 chord at mm. 85 makes one expect a cadenza. Then you have the solo horn come in on the lowest of notes in the whole piece. I wonder if there’s some extra-musical meaning behind this. Thanks for your participation and good luck in the polls! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 7.75 9 9 7 9 9 8.25 Average Score: 8.50

A quaint pastorale-like entry with the peace of the summer day channeled through the oboe/soprano voice. The contour of the melody is also very pleasant and made me think of nature. The beginning of the piece functions well as an introduction before the oboe/soprano voice comes in. And the modulation and change of meter are a welcome contrast that develop the piece and bring musical interest! I also like the phrase extensions where you suddenly treat parts of the phrase in half-time (mm. 35). Something I miss that I think could have made the piece more complete is a return to G major at the end to round out the form of the piece into a ternary ABA. As it is, the piece doesn’t really sound finished to me. Granted, it does sound like the end of that particular 6/8, E major section. But it feels like a return to G major and a coda would be in order for the piece to really sound concluded. Minus all the score engraving flaws, the problems with many syllables being sung on a single note, the ensemble patches for the strings instead of individual strings, and the ensemble misnomer since this is a piano quartet with voice rather than a piano trio, this is a very bright and sweet piece of music that quite adequately channels the topic/theme of the competition! Thanks for your participation and good luck in the polls! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9.5 9 7.5 8 7 8 9 8 Average Score: 8.25

Dear fellow composers, I’m pleased to present you today my submission to the YCF 2026 Summer Competition! I must admit, that the task of the competition was really challenging, starting from „Nothing“ and than get the right ideas for „Something“ that is reminiscent to the mood of the summer day as expressed by Paul Verlaine’s poem. The challenge. When a composer has trouble coming up with a brilliant idea for a new piece, it sometimes takes several attempts, each of which yields different individual ideas. And there are some pieces that consist of several ideas that have been “glued” together, ultimately resulting in something like a “collage song.” I’m thinking, for example, of “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles or “Band on the Run” by Paul McCartney and Wings. However, there also exists such a kind of piece in Bach’s Welltempered Clavier, the Prelude VII in E-flat major, BWV 852. That particular prelude starts with a short section with runs of 32th notes, followed by a „more serious“ part in slow motion, that reminds me at a „chorale“. The third and longest part is a fugato with two subjects that further develops the ideas from the first two sections. So with this particular Bach prelude in mind, I had thus found the model for my own prelude, which serves as the „sketch“ for the quintet finally presented here as my submission. I always start to compose the pieces for piano in order to – on the one hand, have another piece for my preludes and fugues project, and on the other hand, because I find it to hard to mix the two phases of „composing“ and „orchestrating“ together. So I have posted the piano version as a standalone piece "Prelude XXI in B flat major" on the „Piano Music, Solo Keyboard“ thread. The poem. When I came around to the second part, the “Chorale” section, I faced the challenge of treating the upper voice of this four-part harmony as the melody for a musical setting of the poem. Since I don’t speak a word of French and have no idea how the syllables are rhythmicized, I looked at Gabriel Fauré’s setting of the poem in his Op. 61, No. 7 to find out which words are pronounced or sung briefly and which are longer. As an interesting fact, I discovered that Fauré had actually chosen the same key, B-flat major, that I had chosen before. The instrumentation. Now that the decision had been made to set the poem to music, I wondered how I could orchestrate it so that it would sound like a French “chanson.” My first thought was to choose the accordion as the main accompanying instrument. And since I wasn’t sure, I Googled: “What are the typical accompanying instruments for a French chanson?”—and sure enough, “accordion,” “guitar,” and “piano” came up. In addition to these, and to take advantage of the possibility of a quintet, I use a trumpet and a cello. Both of these instruments are capable of contributing different timbres (the cello either played with a bow or pizzicato, and the trumpet either muted or unmuted), and during the poem stanzas, I always use the muted trumpet as a substitute for the human voice. The title. Another challenge. A title in French would be appropriate, but I do not really trust translation programs in such delicate situations, since I don’t understand the nuances of the possible result. Thus, I’ve chosen the simple title „Summer – A Song of Beauty and Melancholy“. The latter since the piece features more passages in minor than in major and, therefore, does not only express the joy and beauty of the summer day, but is somewhat melancholic, too. Form and structure: 00:00 (mm. 1-14) The first section is an „improvisation“ which introduces the warm key of B-flat major. 00:34 (mm. 15-29) The second Adagio section could be a „chorale“ and is used to set the first stanza of the poem to music. 01:31 (mm. 30-90) The third and longest section is a fugato based on two subjects, interspersed by further stanzas of the poem (second stanza 02:18 at mm. 48-63 and third stanza 03:37 at mm. 75-90). The first subject quotes the first four-note motif of the „improvisation“ section and develops it further, paired with the second subject, thus creating a joyful and dance-like mood. 04:22 (mm. 91-114) The piece finishes with a coda – or better to say – with a recapitulation of the „improvisation“ from the first section. Now in a more melancholic way, meandering between minor and major. I hope, you’ll enjoy it. Wieland Finally, as a kind of „non-AI proof“ I also attached my „working score“ from which the MIDI is generated. It is nearly unreadable and of cause not intended for playing but shows in detail all dynamics, articulations, agogics etc. I applied to achieve the final recording. Praeludium-XXI-B-flat-major-accordion-mix.mp3 Praeludium-XXI-B-flat-major-accordion-with-coversheet.pdf WORKING-SCORE-P21.pdf

I am officially going to change your name to “Wieland The Tinkerer” because of this piece! LoL I think the piece is made up of many interlocking contrapuntal parts and took quite a bit of skillful manipulation of motives to put together! My complaint is that usually, in a fugue, the subject gets stated solo before countersubjects or counterpoint is juxtaposed against it. But here, the listener isn’t given a chance to absorb the melodies/motifs/subject before counterpoint comes in to diffuse the identity of the melodic content. That’s why I think the music is hard to grasp at first but grows in quality upon repeated listening. From one perspective the fact that the instruments are constantly coming in and out of the foreground gives the piece more interesting textures and necessary contrast in the thickness of the counterpoint. On the other hand it also seems a little aimless and meandering since the instruments walk all over each other. The beginning especially sounds like a haphazard collection of instruments slowly starting to play together without rhyme or reason. It just seems like you really had to tinker a lot with the material to make it fit your preconceived notions of the kind of piece that it should be instead of letting the music grow organically and instinctively. Perhaps a fugue was not the best choice for depicting the theme of this competition? Perhaps a different genre of music would have been more appropriate? But of course, it’s your choice as the composer and you’ve chosen this form. Thanks for your participation and good luck in the polls! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 8 7 8 8 9 7.5 7.75 Average Score: 7.78

Your melodies have a very lyrical and song-like quality to them (perhaps because they’re .. sung? LoL) They’re quite beautiful and perhaps they’re the strength of this music. The textures you create are also very delicate (most of the time). There are spots where you’re very indelicate however, such as at rehearsal D. Although this didn’t bother me as much once I turned down the volume a bit upon repeated listening. The melodies channeled the spirit of Verlaine’s poem quite effectively I thought! Your score has some collisions between rests and 16th notes in the harp part. And it’s already been mentioned that some of your huge harp chords are unplayable. I do like the middle section of the piece where the harp solo creates a very tranquil and serene atmosphere. Thanks for your participation and good luck in the polls! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8.6 8.5 8 7.9 6 5 8.5 8 Average Score: 7.56

A very vivacious entry full of life and longing! It depicts the summer love with its brightness and energy. It’s very sweet and vigorous - almost more like spring than summer! I think I’ve just about exhausted my complement of adjectives in describing this piece LoL. There are spots where I feel like there is a missing melody or in hindsight, it seems like the full ensemble should have been playing when only piano was present. I’m talking specifically about mm. 1 - 2 (perhaps I can understand this privation here since it’s the introduction), mm. 18 - 19, mm. 42, 123 & 136 (I feel like here the melody is missing for 3 beats even though the piano has it - it wasn’t brought out enough in the rendition for me to perceive it as present). I really appreciate the interludes (like mm. 50) where the ensemble thins out and a calmer texture is honed for some much needed contrast. I think a more developed denouement could have been achieved with this piece - right now, it seems like the piece just stops in the middle of a main phrase that was heard before. I think for me to perceive a proper coda, it would have to be made up of material that would be related to the main material but varied in a way suggesting the encroaching completion of the piece. Thanks for your idea for this competition and your participation in the creation of the awards as well as for submitting this entry for this contest! Thanks for your participation and good luck in the polls! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8.25 8.4 8.5 8 10 9 8.9 8.5 Average Score: 8.69

It sounds like you just indiscriminately put down diatonic notes in the key of C major. Where you do stray from C major, the chromatic alterations clash with natural notes in some of the other instruments (ex: mm.13 Harp has F# while Viola has F natural) Also, I don’t think the harp can change pedal to F# that quickly while arpeggiating 16th notes at your tempo (in one beat). From your comments, it seems like you deliberately chose not to pay attention to harmony because you were trying to blend “minimalism and 20th century writing”. This doesn’t sound like either of those styles. And you don’t get to just stop paying attention to harmony when composing in any given style. The result is that it sounds like you just randomly and aimlessly started clicking in notes. And the pentatonic/Chinese-like nature of the piece doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the theme of the contest. I’ll repeat what others have said as well: Besides a single F below the staff in treble clef, there’s no justification for using the Viola instead of a Violin. And the clef change to alto clef towards the end is pointless since the range of the part doesn’t change but stays the same. The piece seems to be composed to satisfy just about the bare minimum requirements of the competition - 3 minutes if rounding up and 3 instruments. Nonetheless - thanks for your participation and good luck in the polls. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 3 3 7 3 7 6 3 3 Average Score: 4.38

Your piece is the last I've heard (but not least, just the order I used), and yet you still brought something different from the others. I really appreciate the creativity used with form with this competition. It seems like everyone had such a different take, and splitting the stanzas into an ABA form was a great idea to me. I feel like if I had participated in this competition I would have organized the music in a similar fashion. I enjoyed the tossing around of the LH piano motif to different instruments, and the jovial sense you gave in the composition. A change to the minor mode would have served well as a contrast to me, but the beauty of composing is we all have a different take and direction we feel like the music should go. You give variation in other ways, and I especially love the piano flourishes near the end. Cool ensemble too, the horn was a pleasant change in instrumentation from the other pieces. On a side note, I've listened to basically nothing but Beethoven's late string quartets for the past 4 or 5 months (he's my favorite composer by far). It sounds insane probably, some may even call me a lateBeethovenaddict ( :P ), but I've been obsessed with what I consider to be the greatest music ever composed, always picking up on little details upon every hearing. A profound sadness lingers throughout no.12-16, but also in my opinion a novel and unrepeatable expression we're all lucky Beethoven had the strength to compose in his weakest moments. Good luck with the voting, and thanks for sharing! It was fun to listen to all the different interpretations of the competition, and yours was no exception. Well done :)

Wonderful piece! Aside from articulations and key changes as mentioned by others, this was a nice piece to hear and definitely was reminiscent of summer and love. Great advice here :) I hope you learned a lot from our little competition, that is the hopeful achievement after all. No matter the results, you should be proud of a fine piece. I'm not the most versed (pun :D ) with vocal and ensemble music, but it seemed quaint and prudent to the goal of the competition. Good luck with the voting, friend. Hope you stick around

Hi @Matthew M , Such a lush and lovely setting of the poem as an art song! I also choose to go this route and set the text. I really enjoyed your version of it. I think the piece would work even better as a solo for voice and string orchestra. One big thing, if you're planning on this being sung in English - the Richard Stokes translation is in copyright, so you may have to reconsider some things. Some quick engraving notes: in general the score is quite cluttered; make the rastral size bigger and give more space between staves and systems watch when you copy & paste that extra things don't get attached; the lyrics accidently show up in the piano part at times the syllable division don't match the slurs in the voice part at times, so I'm not sure where the words would fall check that the breath mark in m27 would not be followed; it's almost always better to not give singers breath marks add lyric extenders to syllables under a melisma Some string writing notes: I would be careful using the wedge markings for string players - this means a different sound than I think you would like in this piece the ranges of the players are all very middle of the road; explore the upper ranges of the strings In general, there's a lot of everyone playing all at once. Find places to explore the colors of only using sections of the ensemble Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 lovely melody 8 good job filling out the harmony in the string parts, but the chords used are often obvious choices with little development 7 not clear divisions of musical sections - begins to all blur together 6 6 see above comments 8 see above comments 7 nice job setting the poem 7 Average Score: 7.125

Hi @Wieland Handke , Very different than many other pieces so far. I really appreciate the ingenuity in your composition. I also enjoy the amount of detail you put into your score. All the instruments are well thought out and notated with precision. I know the playback doesn't match, but others above me have done a much better job dissecting the accordion part. I do love the combination of accordion notes and L.H. chord buttons. The guitar part is all very easy. The double stops you have are simple fingerings with little issue. I would actually love if you added more to it. The classical guitar is quite a soft instrument compared to the rest of the quintet (I would probably amplify myself if playing this piece). As is, it comes across as more of a mandolin part than guitar part. I think it would be great to add some full chords, especially starting at Reh. B. All the final notes in the phrase could be turned into playing multiple strings. I also don't think you often need a dynamic marking for each note. If you'd like it to be louder, you can always double strings or add octaves for the player. Some engraving thoughts: I would reconsider score order: maybe tpt, gtr, vlc, acc, pno maybe? I would always have the piano at the bottom of a chamber score like this. Overall the score does look quite cluttered, but you have given us a lot of information. Even with the dense texture, find a way to bring the staves of the acc. and pno. parts closer together. In 2/4 I would still beam with the beat even at this tempo. All the unbeamed 8th notes make it difficult to count. I would mark what type of mute you prefer for the trumpet. Also, only mark this the first time and then use 'open' to cancel the marking. The mute marking should also be placed above the staff, not below. Very interesting to see your compositional process behind the piece, but for a final score I would remove the fugal analysis and lyrics. Make sure the acc and pno parts are not barred together. The pedal markings for the piano become cumbersome. I think it is natural for a pianist to play it this way. You could also simply write 'with Ped.' or use the line pedal markings instead of all the asterisks. Several bar rests are misplaced (pno m20 for example) So much of the music is playful and lovely. The notation style and having a separate dynamic for almost every single note becomes distracting from this fact. Double barlines at tempo changes; put 'a tempo', 'piu mosso', etc. markings in bold non-italic above the top staff Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 8 8 clearly organized form, but not sure if transitions always worked; did not develop well 10 very creative 6 see comments above 8 see comments above 9 very French 8 memorable Average Score: 8.125

Hi @Musicman_3254 Really beautiful entry to this competition. I loved the music to this piece, a lot of my thoughts are on cleaning up the score and parts so that they are more legible and effective. Some engraving thoughts: make sure the first full system of the score includes all instruments and their full names (even if resting) hide bar rests in the harp part if you are writing cross-staff for the opening, use hairpins instead of the cres. and dim. lines solo marking for instruments is extraneous octaves in the harp (mm15-17) would be better read on two staves as one hand would play each note clefs: none of these instruments should use alto clef cello should only ever be in bass, tenor, and treble clefs baritone should always be in bass clef never use octave clefs for a non octave transposing instrument harp m51 - use an ottava line instead key signature Gb is a lot of flats, it works great for the harp though I might be tempted to leave the harp in Gb and notate the flute/cello/voice in F# major, but unsure if it would be any better put slurs on the grace notes and connect them to their primary note not sure what purpose the marking in the cello part in m59 serves don't let dynamics or other text cut into barlines unless you really need them to (m86 flute) make sure trill lines extend to their last note (mm102-104 oboe) large harp chords - use one arpeggio line across both staves; don't need the up arrow arpeggio line unless you're going in both directions Some playability thoughts: I saw lots of comments above about the playability of the harp part, but I didn't read all of them. None of the harp part is currently technically impossible, but here are my thoughts to make it easier on the player. the Dnat to flat ped change (m20 and m101) is totally fine and doable. There's plenty of time for the player to flip the pedal to natural and back to flat - you might hear a little bit of noise, but it's unlikely. This is also the only pedal change in the piece, so I'm sure they'll manage. the cross staff arpeggios at the beginning are wonderful, adding in doubled notes in mm5-14 is difficult and likely not worth the additional amount of sound that will be created. I would suggest either start up the octave and bring it down an octave for more resonance in m12. on a similar note, any passage which immediately repeats the same note is challenging on the harp, as it required the player to mute the string and then pluck it again my thoughts on the large chords - again technically possible, it's just asking a lot and is quite fast. The player would alternate hands to play across the entire harp, so get rid of two arpeggio lines and put one big one across both staves. The tempo is likely too fast to play all the notes, it will also be too loud at the dynamics you have marked. Save the big arpeggiated chords for one per bar at most and make sure you really want to volume of so many strings sounding at once. A trill on the harp (m86) doesn't always work well. I would switch the pedal so that it's a bisbigl. between G# and Ab. The flute part is very low. I would not have it written to sound lower than the oboe damore. Even the very beginning I would switch the pitches or bring the flute part up the octave. Curious as to why you chose the oboe damore. It's an uncommon instrument and very, very few players have it. The range doesn't call for it either, as it all fits nicely in the range of the traditional oboe. The oboe does not dim. to nothing effectively. m72 and similar places will be difficult The cello range is too demanding of the player. High Gbs and Bbs at the dynamic level you have asked for is impossible. Bring it down one or two octaves. mm53-59 is confusing as well, it's very high and the ppp dim marking makes it seem like you don't want it to be heard Not all of the cello doublestops in mm59-71 are possible. The Gb and Ab dyad is a real stretch. ( I wonder if the entire piece could be transposed up a half step and you could use open strings?) Some text-setting thoughts: Lovely, lovely use of the voice. I also set the poem as an art song and I really love your rendition of it here. I know there are different house styles, but I would only use slurs to show syllable melismata or very long phrases. I love the stress of the first phrase, but make sure that important words are highlighted on the beat Make sure word divider lines (-) are not causing collisions with the text Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 beautiful and memorable melodies 9 effective harmonies and instruments harmonize more often than play in octaves 9 good form which supports the text of the poem 9 loved the musical content 6 see comments above 6 see comments above 9 love the setting of the text 8 great piece! Average Score: 8.125

Hi @MK_Piano , Lovely writing and it was great to listen to your music! I immediately felt the connection between the music and the poem. I thought it brought out the summer love side of Verlaine's poem quite nicely. As a whole, it does come across very piano heavy, especially in terms of rhythmic pulse. Some engraving thoughts (very picky): I would make the string part staves just a hair larger for legibility be consistent with your Ped marking, sometimes it's the lines sometimes it's the asterisks once and a while a random staccato was missing in one part and not the others (vln m122 for example) I'm never sure if it's actually worth breaking secondary beams for 32nd notes in the violin runs wondering if articulations should be consistent between parts (accents in mm128-end for example) some repeat dynamics, make sure cresc/dim are always arriving at a marking not engraving but something to think about, the Richard Stokes translation of the poem is still under copyright, so the score would not be publishable with the text included in the front matter Some thoughts on the string writing (first of all, this is all very possible and doable, just some suggestions as a string player): first, thank you for switching clefs and using tenor clef in an appropriate context and style for the cello violin octaves - this gets quite exhausting on the player's wrist and in my opinion exhausting on the ears, I would use it more sparingly I would save the octaves for slow moving lines, not faster 8th notes (mm81-87 is probably not worth the effort) I would save the octaves for important places in the phrase/piece, it currently feels like a default setting if you're set on the octaves, I wonder if this would work better as a piece for piano quintet with the vlns 1 and 2 in octaves throughout similar thought - the chords in mm136-137 will need more time for the player, not a great idea to put them in such a rhythmically tight spot bowings - none of the marked bowings you have are necessary, these would all be obvious to the player vla part in mm18-21 and its analogous spots is quite tricky for a string player to be accurate off the downbeats like that, I wonder if it would be worth doubling the first note so it would be [D, DBD] separate than three slurred, that's a common string rhythm octave doubling is a string player's worst nightmare in this sort of late Romantic sounding tonal chamber music see if there are places to incorporate harmony rather than just octaves or octaves with the piano would love to see more rhythm included in the string part, not just the piano part Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9.5 lush, memorable melodies 7.5 textures rarely develop; lovely harmony in the piano, would love to have that translate to the full ensemble 8.5 clear sense of form, with very little play or freedom to it 8.5 lovely writing 9.5 only very minor errors 9.5 notes on string writing above 10 very well with the theme, loved it 9 quite traditional at times Average Score: 9

Entry:Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 Average Score: 10 Review: You know, I was not expecting piece inspired by the composers of the 2nd Vienna School as part of this competition. I must agree with @MK_Piano with the engraving! It is done with such care! Great job on that front. I must say that instrumentation and orchestration of that is on par. And yes you can play it. It is very creative and it has it unique form. Form when it comes to 20th century, well...let us not bring up. Form in the classical sense was toss out of the window and modern composers were more focused emotion and new ideas. Yes, this went above what expected of the expected and exceeded. Overall, I think this is best one!

Hey there, Wieland Your music has a lot of qualities I'm envious of, like your knowledge and inspiration from baroque music, engraving technique, clever counterpoint, FUGUE writing, etc. You're very different from me, and I love that I can explore your music to help prop up my weaknesses. I'm a guitarist, and I've probably listened to this about 10 times by now (literally :D). I won't go into detail like @Omicronrg9 did about the accordion with your guitar part, mainly because you didn't really give me much to go off of. You have three polyphonic instruments, yet you took special care to notate fingering and button markings or whatever for piano and accordion, but the guitarist is left trying to figure out hand positions and fingerings. Why? Is it because you're unfamiliar with the instrument? If so, so be it, that's okay, that can be learned. But not one slur?? Only a few chords? Our chords RING, you should use them more. I felt like you treated the guitar like a violin. Sorry, I just found it offensive when going through your piece. Again, it's okay if you're unfamiliar, but I think the piece would have been better off with another instrument substituting the guitar (especially with the care given to the accordion, which I assume you haven't written a lot for as well?) Don't get me wrong, the guitar part is all playable, but the excessive dynamics and lack of articulation when compared to the other instruments just had me hyper fixated with that. Sure, the dynamic markings are probably for the playback, but I would have made a lot of those marks invisible for the score (if your program allows it, ofc). All in all, this music is good, you have talent as a composer, but the guitar part in particular just rubbed me the wrong way playing through the piece. Sorry if I come off harsh 😰, but I'd rather let you know faults in part writing then just showering you with praise, because I like you. I like what you have to offer the world with music, and I like what you do for our community here at YC. You're a gem, my friend. Keep composing!!

Whether you win or lose the competition, saying this means you actually won something much better. You know, I've read through everyone's comments, and a lot of what others have said about wind breathing, harp writing, orchestration, etc. all holds true. Take note of it; it's free advice that if applied will help you improve. BUT Your style, your voice, your raw talent that you're hopefully always going to keep working on was really fun and a treat to listen to. Your music is emotional and definitely applicable to the poem. I really really love how you treated the vocals (cool to incorporate vocals btw!). There were large gaps between the phrases, and I think that lead to a balanced feel of it all. You gave solos to the different instruments, letting them all sing on their own and together when necessary. Even though I think the winds could have been fleshed out more and the harp used more effectively, the point is you TRIED and branched out from your comfort zone to compose this piece. You hopefully learned a lot, and with the feedback you've gotten you're more equipped with technique for future pieces. This was definitely one of my favorites so far for the reasons stated. Well done sir, you should be very proud of this piece :)

Hey Wieland, no rush at all! I didn't rush the post either, in fact it took me longer than I planned 😀. Again, good luck!

Hello @Omicronrg9 ! Thank you very much for this urgent and detailed response! I’m still a little overwhelmed, so that I will need some days to study that all thoroughly – I’m sure, I will learn a lot from it! I’ll get back and reply as soon as possible. Wieland

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7.75 10 7 10 10 8.5 7.5 8 Avg: 8.59 Very clear motif throughout, and the whole tone harmony makes this sound more like a fantasy. What's interesting is that I think you mix the harmony with bits of pentatonic. Thus, we have lots of tension and release throughout which helps keep you on your toes. At times I felt like this piece turns into a thriller, and this has a lot to do with your chosen harmony. The piece therefore gives us a mixed bag of emotions. Sometimes I feel like we are in a fantasy world perhaps in a forest. Then there are peaceful sections which could be the summer afternoon setting. The pentatonic sections remind me of beautiful vast fields or feelings of zen. Then we have the viola sections which could be a chase scene. Finally, your harp runs sometimes creates a mood of terror. Nevertheless, this is a very fun and interesting piece, and a good lesson on how harmony can really transform moods from one to another!

It's obvious this is really great! Although a tad piano heavy, it's really balanced otherwise. I agree with @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu that the string writing could have benefited from a little more counterpoint, or even variation in the rhythm. Several times I wanted the violin melody to at least have a dotted quarter- eighth rhythm during the quarter note passages, just to give the notes it's climbing to some added punch. That's subjective, and as it is it's wonderful. You're right about the string staves being a bit smaller, it is the more proper way to have the final score since it's a piano part. I think it's also beneficial to have a "composer's" score too, where all the parts are equal in size to better read. Not saying you should have 14 versions of your score to appease everyone, but I think that's where that little nitpick comes from. I love the lush nature of this piece, I think it's picture perfect for the subject material. The beauty of summer goes hand in hand with your audio interpretation of the poem. This is music that is just plain enjoyable to listen to, and although I've been busy with life lately, every time I see your name pop up here I have to check it out. Please continue to keep making a name for yourself, you're obviously very passionate and dedicated to your craft. Your engraving is marvelous, and it's music that I'll continue to reference for my own engraving. Thanks for sharing this, and good luck with the polls! I'm excited to hear what you'll have for us next :)

Hi @JDevorMusic ! Technically this should be the most complete piece of the competition! The harmony and mood are the most varied, the use of motives very notable and coherent, instruments, like @Fruit hunter noted, are extended to their utmost potential. I like your use of whole tone scale which definitely makes the music sound impressionistic and French. The piece keeps moving forward because of the varying textures when you allow some moments of quieter passages with fewer players. Like @MK_Piano I think the piece less related to the original poem and the competition theme. But this one is subjective as we all have our own interpretations on poems. But the piece stands alone well! Thx for sharing and joining the forum! Henry

Hi @Ninja Nolan ! I like the idea of using different movements to present contrast. The opening movement sounds like an introductory chorale to the piece while the last movement sounds like an ending chorale to the piece, much like the structure of a cantata. The centre movement is the main statement of the piece to me and I love the vivacity of the march, it sounds like opera buffa to me. I am expecting that after the Ab major trio the Eb major march will return as in a da capo piece. I think the texture of the piece can be more varied: mostly it is chordal except the march, and even in the march it works in pairs so rhythmically the whole piece sounds less varied. I think you can also add more contrast inside movement 1 and 3 as well, instead of only having the contrast between movements. Also it would be great if there are some coherence of materials between movements, but this point is subjective! Harmonically it's Baroque and more traditional. And for the text, I think the 3rd movement shouldn't be tragic as in your music with the corresponding stanza: And when the evening comes, the caressing breeze That plays in your veils shall be sweet, And the peaceful gazes of the stars Shall smile benevolently upon the lovers.I myself cannot link the tonic G minor with the happiness of the stanza. The 3rd movement sounds more like a contemplative reflection of something sadder than portraying peace and love in the poem. But this point is also personal and subjective! Thx for sharing! I know I am nitpicky in this comment, but I do like the music especially the 2nd movement, thx for joining the competition! Henry

Hi @Wieland Handke ! For the accordion, probably only @Omicronrg9 can talk about the accordion since he's an accordionist (I'm summoning you here Daniel). Btw, the instrumentation of this piece is almost exactly the same with Daniel's group. I think you are using an orchestral mind for this chamber work. There are lots of careful doublings of melodies and countering parts. I think the texture of this piece is the most varied in the entries I have listened to so far! What is your purpose to introduce fugato in this piece? Is it related to the narrative strcuture? Just one thing: I actually do not really like the ' pulse between the passages which I think it will hinder its flow. My favourite passage is section F when the texture and harmony are less complicated, it really gives good contrast with passages before it. I at first don't like too much of the harmony since I think the dissonance is not neccessary, but after my 2nd listening I suddenly find they are necessary to convey the melachony with the usage of accordion, good job on that! Thx for sharing! Henry

Score PDF and Audio Download About the Piece: This piece is written for 4 soprano saxophones. It has three movements: “La soie,” “Le ciel,” and “Le soir.” Each movement is based on a stanza from the original poem by Paul Verlaine, “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été.” ______________________________________________________________________________ I - La soie (The silk) ______________________________________________________________________________ II - Le ciel (The sky) ______________________________________________________________________________ III - Le soir (The evening) ______________________________________________________________________________

This piece was written for the 2026 Summer Competition. It is technically past midnight on my side, I apologise as the audio took a while, hope this can still be reviewed. Note: I named this piece directly after the poem, maybe because it's the best name I could give it, actually. It's meant to directly translate the poem into music, so I figured that would be apt for a piece such as this. It's written in a loose ternary form with a few motifs consistently coming back throughout. Each section (ABA) represents a stanza in the poem. The first section opens with a bright, jubilant depiction of a summer day, before transitioning to the beauty of the subject. Then, the middle section adds some turbulence to this nature of the love, a personal interpretation of mine on the poem. Finally, the return of the A theme is accompanied by fleeting runs like the evening wind, as the lovers gaze into the sky. Most of the rest I will leave to your interpretation of what is happening, but I do encourage physically reading the poem while listening to the piece. As for the instrumentation, the French Horn is an instrument dear to me, despite having only picked it up for slightly less than three years. Through all the technical difficulties of this piece (yes, the Horn part is playable, albeit challenging), I wanted to showcase the mellow, melodic sound of the horn as something unique. The choice of the violin, then, was nothing special, another melodic instrument to complete the lovers' dialogue portrayed thoroughout the piece. The piano, then, allows for all the word painting possibilities. It was quite a rushed piece, given my recent schedule, but I enjoyed the time spent just appreciating the loveliness of the poem. Enjoy listening! Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été.mp3 Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été.pdf

I finally finished! I thought we were supposed to adapt the poem to be sung, so that's what I composed. For voice and piano trio! Attached is the link to the youtube video, as well as the pdf of the score and the mp3 audio. So on a bright summer day.mp3 So on a bright summer day.pdf

on pastel skies was “commissioned” (more in this case called for) by the young composers 2026 summer competition fit this team after a poem about the serene atmosphere of the Midsummer afternoon So, on a bright summer day it shall be: The great sun, my partner in joy, Shall make, amid the satin and the silk, Your dear beauty lovelier still; The sky, all blue, like a tall canopy, Shall quiver sumptuously in the long folds Above our two happy brows, grown pale With pleasure and expectancy; And when evening comes, the breeze shall be soft And play caressingly about your veils, And the peaceful stars looking down Shall smile benevolently on man and wife. The gestation of this piece (initial thought, even before the entry of the first note) was an image of a dreamy Florida sunset over the Gulf of Mexico with this image the piece will transport you to another dimension of into the pastel pink, orange, and red opalescent skies instrumentation xylophone (doubling on glockenspiel and crotales, /w large zill bell attachment vibraphone I /w sus and Z.bell and dull metallic object (something like a Burma bell) vibraphone II /w sus and Z.bell and dull metallic object (something like a Burma bell) Marimba I /w sus and temple blocks Marimba II /w Chimes, sus and temple blocks and large, vibrating drum ( tom or surdo ect.) Very important note ^please use the official scoring system if you feel like it and if you’re able to with this piece, it helps a lot with my learning and also feedback and scoring of the music also is very important for my statistical research^ On Pastel Skies.mp3 On Pastel Skies.pdf

Hey there @Kvothe ! Lovely piece, it's definitely reminiscent of summer, and it fits well within the "love" theme of the poem. Your instrumentation is a little strange, but as you said, you wanted to branch out of your comfort zone and I'll always commend experimentation and trying out new things. I mean, look at the feedback you've already gotten... you must have learned a lot from Luis, Henry, and others. :) This had some cool moments. I especially liked the change at bar 19, I just wish you featured that more! It gave a nice break from the flowing harp lines you mostly use throughout. You gave pedal markings for the harp near the end, should there be one in the beginning too? I'm no harpist, but the parts seem a little difficult at that tempo. Maybe something to double check for your future harp pieces. Another thing I'd like to mention, and this goes for the other pieces of yours I've heard, is that the phrasing seems a bit off. It feels like reading run on sentences at times, like the beat is landing or starting where it shouldn't. For example, I would have let the opening viola melody rest after the B note in bar 4, just to let it breathe a little. It might be easier for the listener to grasp ahold of your ideas a little better too. That way, when you add variation to your melodies or motifs, the listener can more easily follow along. Nice work Kvothe, and thanks for participating! Hopefully you had a lot of fun working on this, and good luck in the voting :)

This one made me laugh. Yeah, impossible not to, I guess? 🤣 I agree, but honestly, anyone up to the challenge would do it for me, be it from the russian school or from Madagascar. Thank you for your comment, Lithl!

Yes, that would be interesting to find out what he thinks of my „funnyly placed“ register symbols and my bass notation. I think, the accordion is often too underrated, and so the challenge of that competition was a great opportunity to compose a piece for the accordion as well. I’m very glad you noticed noticed and mentioned that. Indeed, since I this year did my first exercises in orchestration for a full orchestra, I have tried to apply those experiences to the “Quintet.” So I didn’t simply take the original piano composition and translate its four-part voice leading literally to—let’s say—a string or woodwind quartet; rather, I tried to distribute the four voices among the instruments in such a way that the melodies and textures flow more seamlessly from one to the next, as is often found in the magnificent orchestrations of Romantic composers. And that’s exactly the reason - considering the ensemble as an „orchestra“ - why I have chosen an orchestral notation rather than one used in chamber music, which has led to the somewhat unusual instrument groups or families (where the brass, plucked string, and string sections consist of only one instrument each, and the percussion/keyboard section includes the accordion and piano); the bracketing of that „groups“ and the connected bar lines between accordion and piano have already been criticized therefore. The idea for the fugato came to me while I was looking for a form or a “model” for the piece. As I described earlier in my introduction to this post, I recalled the prelude from BWV 852, in which Bach apparently faced “the same challenge”—namely, moving from “nothing” to “something”—and therefore combined three different musical ideas: an introduction in a rather improvisational style, a “chorale,” and finally a fugato in which the first two ideas were ultimately developed together. And since I’m a “counterpoint guy,” I always feel comfortable when I can develop melodies in a fugal manner, even though it was difficult this time, as the flow was somewhat interrupted by the passages where the second and third stanzas begin. T So I finally didn’t end the piece with an ever-escalating fugue, but rather recapitulated the introduction, beginning at rehearsal mark F. Thank you very much. Often, you don’t even notice the dissonances yourself anymore once you’ve listened to your own piece dozens (if not hundreds) of times.

No - from what I understand, you should lower individual tracks since lowering the master will not get rid of clipping if individual tracks are clipping.

Hi fellow @latebeethoven_addict ! This piece has some really nice melody and warm mood. One thing I notice is that within section you do not modulate which make the piece less interesting harmonically. The whole piece is never in minor. Even though the poem itself is beautiful and "positive", you can add more varied harmonic color in the piece. The use of rhythm is varied enough. The passage in b.66 accidentally reminds me of Chopin etude op.25 no.6 lol! The use of high register piano fast notes in b.108 is beautiful and you capture "breeze" there really well! The ending is lovely as well. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @Musicman_3254 ! I quite like the pentatonic language and the ending some very Chinese to me! But like @MK_Piano noted the piece can be more varied in terms instrumentation. More interactions between the instruments can be added and variation of textures with some more polyphony would be good. Now the piece is predominantly homophonic and sometimes heterophonic. Another thing is the change of harmony and keys. The music is mostly in Gb major with pentatonic setting which makes the piece sounds a bit monotomous and not moving forward becauase of lack of conflict and drama and dissonance (disclaimer: I love the key and setting since I exactly use the same setting for my Sextet in Gb major!!!!!). Apart from the harp issue, for the instrumentation I'm not sure the wind player can play the opening notes that long unless they have circular breathing technique. For the harp players playing glissando is a deafult, so in passages like in b.43 you should rather notate "non-arpeggio". For the score presentation, Cello never uses alto clef but you use it right at the beginning and many later passages!. For strings only viola uses alto clef. Cello only uses Bass, Tenor and Treble clef! Also I think Baritone wil prefer bass clef to alto clef. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi Mason! @MK_Piano (Not Mark lol) This one is a passionate entry, it for sure matches the original poem: passionate love in bright summer. I actually agree with @Fruit hunter that this one is a love song (but ofc a very good one!) No doubt you and @UncleRed99 are great friends as I see many things similar in your music: melodic, moody, simplistic, con moto and affectionate. The chamber writing is interactive with constant interactions between parts. I think there can be more variation in texture such more counterpoint between the strings: they usually move in a more homorhythmically. I think in some moments you can invite countermelodies as well. But that climax at the end is greatly achieved with the homorhythms with good variation to the original A section. Your engraving is so better than mine! One thing I also note is the key scheme of the piece: The piece is mainly in G major and E minor. Since I have listened to a lot of Scarlatti Sonatas lately, I would love to see more modulations and keys invited in the piece for more contrast, even though the contrast between G major and E minor is already quite good. WIth the less varied key scheme many of the harmonic patterns and sequence are more predictable and less surprising which to me makes the love less exciting. I may sound harsh in this review but it's all personal and I do like your work haha. Thx for sharing! Henry