PeterthePapercomPoser

It is now 2026 and the Christmas Music Event is closed to further submissions! But stay tuned for the Conclusion thread to be released!

Hi @Luis Hernández! I think I remember hearing this piece from you in some Christmas Event from year's past. I love the simplicity of this piece - it shows that you don't need to write overly complex music to write something that is quite sophisticated and brings up some quite somber and serious emotions. It also brings a sense of timelessness and constant surprise. Like @Thatguy v2.0 mentioned, I think it is better to listen to it without the score. I think in my case it also induces a kind of trance or altered state of consciousness. Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hey @Aiwendil! Very cool brass quintet! It's definitely very Christmassy and in an original way is difficult to achieve! I have also used a brass ensemble (a brass octet) in my 3rd Christmas Mash-up this year. You can judge for yourself whether it's any good LoL. I think your rendition is much better than mine as I just used Musesounds. I do wonder why you chose the specific instruments that you did. Why you chose the D Trumpet is obvious since the piece is in D. But why the Bb trumpet instead of another D trumpet or a C trumpet? Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hey @chopin I feel like this fragment is so short that you should have included at least one more repeat of the material perhaps with some kind of variation or switching up of the voices? Also, I'm sure you know that "Jingle Bells" and "Dashing through the snow" are lyrics from the same Christmas Carol "Jingle Bells" just in different sections. For that reason, I think it would be difficult to make a full fledged piece out of it, since you have already spent all your melodic material in the first 8 seconds. Although it is good to note that the melodies can be combined contrapuntally this way in case someone were to ever want to make use of this mash-up in some longer work (that's partially why I am doing my own Christmas Mash-ups too - in case I ever want to steal those ideas in some other more substantial Christmas piece). Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hey again @Wieland Handke I do feel like this one is more outdoorsy and pastorale. I do hear the Bach quote clearer in this one too. The Empty Church is much more somber and quiet. This one, with is full fledged instrumentation is much more joyful and celebratory. Perhaps this one is meant for the joy of the arrival of Christmas Day, while the Empty Church is meant for the yearning of Christmas Eve? Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hey @Wieland Handke! I love the quiet atmosphere! Might this be a piece of music intended to be played during the Church's vespers or evening prayers? Very interesting instrumental combination. I do interpret it as music intended to set the mood for the occasion or be background for a vesper service. Because of your quote of Bach's "Where Sheep May Safely Graze" (or was it "Sleeper's Wake!"? I always get those two mixed up...) I was almost led to include my own Bach quote in my Christmas Scherzo in the Trio section of the Scherzo, but I am happy that I decided against it, as the Trio I came up with is better suited to the piece imo. Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hi again @HoYin Cheung I find reviewing pieces like this very strange because I can hear some themes in this that sound familiar and I can't be sure if it's because your using pre-existing Christmas Carol themes or if you're varying something/mashing it up or if it's just a slight allusion to other themes. So I don't know which aspects of the composition are your own original work and how much is taken from other pieces. I have done 3 Christmas Mash-up's this year myself and I try to give the listener clues letting them know what to listen for and which Christmas Carols I'm using in my renditions. Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hey @Vavrinec! Wonderful wintry atmosphere! I love how you change up the tempo and meter in the middle of the piece to give it an infusion of fresh excitement before returning to the scherzo, or perhaps minuet-like 6/8 section. You also cleverly leave out the string in the 2/4 part which also brings its own contrast. Great job and thanks for sharing! Happy New Year!

Hello @J. Lee Graham! Very nice fugue! This fugue made me realize that I could do yet another Christmas Mash-up between "O, Christmas Tree", "Hark! The Herald Angel's Sing!" and "We wish you a Merry Christmas"! They all start with either an ascending 4th anacrusis or in the case of "Hark!" an ascending 4th on the strong beat. I also love the Harpsichord here. I used to hate the sound of Harpsichords, but somehow I have learned to love them. I think the fugue is perfect for how long it is - I think if would be difficult to write a full-blown longer fugue-fantasia with this subject. Already I have to complain about your repetition of a sequence 5 times in a row between measures 28 - 37. Usually Bach would try to limit such repetitions to 3 or maybe 4 times in a row before varying them. But other than that nitpick I really enjoyed this fugue! Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hey @TristanTheTristan! This definitely feels like has the spirit of Christmas. Sometimes it manages this by somehow indirectly mimicking some Christmas Carols without any direct quotes. Other times it seems like it's inspired by the Nutcracker. The only thing that bothers me is the mechanicality of your rendition. People have already mentioned the mechanical nature of your tremolos and trills and stuff like that. I think all that can be fixed by writing out your trills through tuplets, making them sound exactly as fast or as slow as you want (and also having control of their velocity values). Same thing with the tremolos - you could bring down their volume with velocity values - relegating them to the intended background of the music rather than an annoying thing that jumps out at the listener. The final thing that would really make it sound so much better is the occasional use of the damper pedal. Just those things would help my impression of the piece 10-fold. Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hi @Tunndy! I think there's a lot of warmth to your orchestration! I love those shimmering glockenspiel and triangle ostinati. Some of the things that wouldn't sound idiomatic are the sextuplets in meas. 35. It's unrealistic for the Harp, 2nd Violins and Violas to enter on a sextuplet off-beat like that. It would be better for them to play a note on the downbeat as well if you want that to be performed together. Thanks for sharing and Happy New Year!

Hello @raymond doerr and welcome to the forum! I'm glad we met! I love the warmth and high quality production value of this rendition! I can easily imagine this playing during a sweet wintry moment in a sappy Christmas movie LoL! Great job and thanks for joining and sharing this with us!

Hello again @HoYin Cheung! I think this is far from a pop song! And I think that's a good thing. Maybe the modulations are quite direct, but the style of it is still very classical to my ears. Does your new vocal DAW software that you used to create this support different languages or just English? Cuz I wrote three Christmas Mash-ups this Christmas and I can't help but wonder if it could be used to realize some of them. One of my Mash-ups (No.3) is all in English, but the other two mix Polish, Latin and English. Thanks for sharing this warm choral song!

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.

Hi again @Musicman_3254 and welcome to the forum! I don't know how nobody hasn't mentioned this yet but you prominently use the themes from apparently all three of the movements of Gustav Holst's 1st Suite in Eb. I was sure that you were using some kind of English Folk song but apparently these are Holst's original themes that he wrote during an English folk song revivalist era. I wonder, what is your goal for using all these themes? Were you hoping to improve upon Holst's piece? I think not only would better sounds give your piece more life but also a better understanding of the instruments and how to put them together to sound idiomatic and realistic (and well balanced with each other dynamically). But I find it a bit strange that you didn't let any of us fellow composers/reviewers know that you were using another composer's themes in your work. Thanks for sharing though and Happy New Year!