mercurypickles

Hi all! This is my setting of the Heine poem, "Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht." This poem was set by Johannes Brahms in 1884, included in his Op.96. I decided to set this poem during my first semester of college, studying vocal performance, because I was assigned Brahms' setting of the text but wasn't satisfied with his take on it (sacrilegious as that is). The playback isn't the best, seeing as it's just a MIDI export from musescore, but I'm going to try and record it myself when I get a chance. I hope you enjoy! Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht.mp3

This piece is very nice, it is very dramatic and expressive, but the engraving needs some work. Make sure you do not beam over beat groupings unnecessarily, like in the attached screenshot. You would also do well to avoid putting tempo indications at the ends of systems, which occurs repeatedly.

I've made some revisions to the first movement, clarifying the orchestration and form to hopefully make what the movement is striving for a bit clearer. @PeterthePapercomPoser let me know what you think!

Please forgive me for being a bit defensive! It can be difficult not to leap to die for my choices when I feel I’ve done something right, but like I said, there is different art for different people, and I greatly respect and appreciate your following up. This is my favorite movement in the piece! I’m so glad it came across well for you, I’ve had some very mixed reactions to that movement because of the rather unusual form. (Ternary and sonata form superimposed with the sonata form layer have a reversed recapitulation.) Yes they are! I’m aware and I need to fix them but I haven’t quite figured it out yet - if you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Thank you for taking the time to listen and leave a comment! All I have to say about this is that I feel you’ve missed the point of the movement. Yes, it is rather abstract, and that is by design. This movement was originally written as a contrapuntal exercise which simply grew into something more. As such, it simply doesn’t rely on traditional melodic mechanisms or standard-fare romantic period harmonic structures. In many ways this piece has much more in common with renaissance counterpoint than most other symphonic music I’ve come across. If you’re looking for a “big tune” try listening to the finale, though if you consider this first movement incomprehensible then you may have a difficult time understanding the form of the finale. As for the accusation of, “indiscriminately entering notes into the sequencer,” I take some frustration. You do not know my process, so why insist on saying something so blatantly polemical? I fail to see the value in repeatedly saying things like that, as well as calling the music “a-thematic.” For your information, this movement took me nearly 8 months to complete, it was a tremendous amount of work, and I don’t take what seems to be largely unjustified criticism lightly. If you don’t like a piece of music, that’s fine! There’s plenty of music by very famous composers that simply doesn’t speak to me that I largely find no value in. Not all art is for everyone, we all have different things we prefer over others and I would hate to be someone that would force you to listen to something you don’t enjoy! But with that said, find something more grounded in the score to criticize than something along the lines of, ‘well, it’s not Tchaikovsky and there’s not a big obvious melodic gesture so the composer must not know what they’re doing.” (Yes I realize that’s not word for word what you said, but it’s not exactly far off either.) Again, thank you for taking the time to listen, as well as giving me the opportunity to spell out my feelings toward critics. 😉

It’s interesting you brought this up. In the original quartet version of this piece they are half notes (or semibreves) at half the tempo, but they were too difficult to count and always sounded rushed. One of the fascinating things I’ve started to notice now that I’ve had performances of some of my music is that notation can have a profound effect on how performers interpret sheet music. As such, I chose to put it in breves for a more expansive quality. As for the string tutti/unis. issue, I’ve heard it go either way and honestly don’t care terribly about that detail. It’s easy enough to fix, so if someone convinces me strongly enough in the future I may change it. What did you think of the music in and of itself?

Thank you for taking the time to listen and leave a comment! :-)

After a lot of going back and forth on whether or not to post this here, I’ve finally decided that my true first symphony is ready to have other people’s ears on it! (As opposed to the “symphony” in e minor that I posted here a number of years ago, which I now regard as number zero and don’t allow anyone to look at. 😉) This piece originated last october as a string quartet, and as I worked on the finale of the piece, I realized that rather than writing a chamber piece I was actually writing a large scale orchestral work. I finished it toward the end of this past July. I hope you enjoy!

This is really very lovely! Something about the way your phrases are constructed very much reminds me of Poulenc. He tended to write things in these little 2 to 4 bar phrases and then assemble them in sort of a mosaic-like way, you do something similar here. I love the transition into the more rhythmic passage at around 2:00, though I think you should take a look at the piece as a whole and consider adding some more unexpected harmonic motion. Almost all of your phrases end with either some kind of a dominant functioning chord or they end on your tonic (almost always e minor/E major). This can be very harmful to the flow of your piece, and it starts to sound predictable, especially when it’s stretched out to five minutes in length. That isn’t to say this specific piece is predictable in its entirety, but it’s something to keep an eye on for sure. Thank you for sharing!

Yes, it will be recorded! I’ll probably end up making some kind of synchronized video once the premiere happens. Thank you for your interest! It’s funny you mention b.6, that was one of the spots my violinist friend mentioned as a potential issue. We’re going to have a call sometime soon and go through and fix a bunch of stuff.

And here is the all-important MIDI file, as promised! Double Variations for Solo Violin.mp3

This is a set of variations on two alternating themes for solo violin. I would love some feedback on the string writing generally, as I don’t play a string instrument and this is going to be premiered in the not too distant future. My friend who will be performing it says it’s alright, but I would love to get another violinists opinion on this score. Thanks! (Unfortunately, I don’t have the MIDI file for this on hand, so I’m posting this now and will attach that later! With that said, this piece requires tempo flexibility that MIDI just can’t execute, so bear that in mind please.)

Hello everyone! The last time I posted was well over a year ago, and in that time a lot has changed. I changed schools and studied composition full time for a year, an experience which greatly deepened my understanding and skill of music generally, and allowed new paths in my own artistry to form. I will be slowly going through and posting some of my more recent pieces here, as a way to both reintroduce myself to everyone here, and to come to grips with this great community again. I hope to hear from you all soon! With all of that said, this post is really about a choral piece that I wrote back in the spring. It is a setting of some Sara Teasdale poetry, making a quasi-political statement about war. Please bear in mind that the performers in this recording were under-rehearsed high school students, many of whom had never performed new music and found this challenging to learn. As such, there are some substantial errors in the performance, but for the most part this premiere recording came across well. I hope you like it, let me know what you think!

I've actually been wondering the same thing! I'm not really sure what to do, or how to do that, so I'll do some digging to try and figure that out. I was considering changing that line with the english horn to a different instrument, but when I experimented with that it just didn't feel the same. I'm keeping it as is for now, at least until I'm able to come up with a better solution. Thank you both for your feedback, as well as everyone else who has left wonderful comments and opinions on my work. : )

Hello everyone, It's been a few months since I posted an orchestral piece, and this is the first orchestral piece I've finished in those few months. I'm trying to refocus on writing larger scale pieces because I feel that my best music emerges when I'm working in larger forms for larger ensembles. In a strange way, I just find it easier. This piece is something I sketched out over a few days and decided, on a whim, to orchestrate. The result is something I'm actually pretty happy with and am very excited to share! I did my best to link the various passages using transformations of previously stated material, and I think I was at least partially successful. Please tell me your feedback so I can improve and grow! Intrumentation: 2 Flutes 2 Oboes English Horn 2 Clarinets 1 Bassoon 2 French Horns in F 2 Trumpets in Bb 2 Trombones 1 Tuba Cymbal Timpani Tam-Tam (gong) Harp Violins 1 Violins 2 Violas Cellos Double basses Edit: I've removed the attached score and mp3 and posted a youtube video instead.