orchdork02

Not that I necessarily want to do this, but could we write a passacaglia or chaconne for this competition?

I'm interested in participating. Let's see if I can actually come up with something for this one

Hey I just listened to the first movement for now, and it's really pleasant music. The chromatic touches to the melody were nice, and it reminded me of Mozart. Sometimes the oboe part seemed very difficult in the highest register of the instrument, but I'm no expert. The one place I thought needed more moving notes to keep it going was the little Adagio spot, where the piano chords are kind of boring. Nice work!

Hi, thanks for the comment! You're right that the subject is chromatic, and I think that's what made it fun to work with. I usually harmonized the raised tonic note in the subject as a secondary dominant for the supertonic, but not always. It is quite common in Baroque fugues for voices to leave and reenter usually with another statement of the subject, just to vary the texture a little bit. I'm glad you enjoyed it thanks for listening!

This is a fugue I wrote on Bach's name, which in the German musical alphabet is "Bb, A, C, B". There are a couple pretentious quotations thrown in there, but what can you do. Please leave a comment and tell me what you think! Should I add a prelude? Should I quit composing? I want to know

I think it would be nice to have a Christmas holiday composition challenge/ competition. There's a lot of music to work with, so we could do something like write a fugue or theme and variations based off of a Christmas holiday song.

Please add lyrics. That is all

Are you just going by ear right now? Because the process of trial and error to find what sounds good will be very tricky and time-consuming. I think it would be easier to learn the principles of counterpoint. In general, it's probably good to have the melody and counter melody moving in contrary or oblique motion so that they are independent from each other.

Did you try turning it off and turning it back on again?

I don't know if that's fair. Some parts of the pastoral symphony make it seem like Beethoven is a pretty gifted orchestral colorist. Towards the end of his life, though, I think his scoring became somewhat removed from reality. Some parts of the 9th symphony are admittedly a bit impractical. About the viola parts, I think it's at least as common for the violas to double first violins an octave lower as it is for them to double the cellos an octave higher. Playing with 2nds actually seems to be the least common occurence, but that's just my experience from playing in orchestra.

While I do enjoy counterpoint puns, why have we suddenly decided to resurrect this thread?

http://www.randomsheetmusic.com/

This kind of reminds me of how some performers, like Pablo Casals, sharpen leading tones in what they call expressive intonation. I think the distance between the 7th scale degree and the tonic becomes something similar to a microtone. I'm not such a fan of this practice because it just sounds out of tune to me. However, some believe it helps emphasize the relationship between those two notes. This kind of variable intonation is now kind of old fashioned, and you won't come across it in many performances today. Here's an interesting article about it: http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/cellist-pablo-casals-on-expressive-intonation/

I like to immediately put all my ideas into a Finale file for a single instrument chosen at random and upload it to this website without editing it at all.

Yeah, the practice may not be the best in terms of historically informed performance. However, it is very much a part of the present aesthetic that values a round beatiful sound at all times. Playing double stops presents several problems, the most important of which is that an instrument playing 2 notes at once will sound about twice as loud. This creates a nightmare for dynamic balancing, to say nothing of when people try to play 3 or 4 notes at once, which can often distort the rhythm and articulation.