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I would say Bach's vocal music in general. Whenever I hear someone say they like Bach, it almost always actually mean they like his instrumental works. Which is a real shame: you can add up his entire instrumental oeuvre, and it would not outlast even his Leipzig cantatas.

This will be movement 4 of my cantata (WIP). Text taken from Prometheus. A sample English translation is: I honour thee, and why? Hast thou e'er lightened the sorrows Of the heavy laden? Hast thou e'er dried up the tears Of the anguish-stricken? Was I not fashioned to be a man By omnipotent Time, And by eternal Fate, Masters of me and thee?

Hi @PeterthePapercomPoser and @Hcab5861! I've modelled the overall texture and soundscape off of the bass aria of BWV 159 (which is imo the most beautiful aria Bach has ever written). The omission of a harpsichord continuo and the strings "harmonic halo" are both completely intentional - I want the mood of the music to be gentle, warm, embracing. In addition, I'm a little bit torn on Da Capo form. I think it works well in duets but by default I tend to avoid it. From a singer point of view I don't get excited about singing the first part of the piece exactly twice, and from a compositional point of view, your ritornello theme better be REALLY good to warrant a minimum of four exact repetitions (but more typically six to eight repetitions including fragments), at least for those themes that are tonally closed. I much prefer the scheme of ABA' in these cases (e.g. see the alto aria in BWV 197), where A ends in the dominant and A' ends in the tonic.

Lovely piece. For me, the opening 16-bar theme is almost too good and too delicate to be used repeatedly in this fashion. I wonder if it's possible to transpose the next 16 bars to the dominant (or similar ideas), rewriting the ending so it has a cadence in the tonic key, and expanding the middle section? It'd give your piece a nice rounded binary form, and make the return of the opening later on feel "extra special". I don't actually think the strings needs to have any melodic activity here - I support your idea of keeping the melody to the winds/brass here. However, the accompanying figures can definitely be changed over time from the quavers you have written. Let your imagination go wild!

You know, I like this piece a lot. You break out of your usual style of writing here, creating a balanced contrapuntal texture that is not dense, with plenty of nice sequences and imitation that brings contrast (the hockets like in mm. 19 to 21 are great). I also don't agree with some of the things @Guillem82 mentioned: I don't see or hear any harmonic mistakes/unresolved dissonances, and I don't mind the doubled notes on the violin. Sure, it's uncharacteristic but in this case it works fine, just like the distant modulations. Moving on to things I don't like...I would surmise it as: There is no apparent organisation or plan of your musical motifs. Let me elaborate. Regarding the first point, I remember saying to you before to analyse what Bach does in the WTC with his fugue subjects in order to get an idea of how to develop them (the formal term is fortspinnung). I really would like to make this recommendation again. It is not just fugues, or even Baroque music that this skill applies to - a control and constant development of a limited number of musical ideas is a trait of virtually all classical music. Especially in contrapuntal music, a failure to do this ends up making much of your music "noodling", where you have correctly constructed melodies, harmonies and parts that work with each other, but virtually zero connection between one bar and another. As an example, when I wrote the fugal section of the Overture of my Keyboard Suite, I recognised that the driving rhythm will be 6 semiquavers-per-bar. To achieve motivic unity, I limited myself to three possible settings of notes to this rhythm: an ascending scale, a turn figure (both of these can be found in the subject), and a rising fourth from the 2nd to 3rd notes followed by a descending scale (found in the countersubjects). You can check for yourself that except at structural cadences, every group of 6 semiquavers in the 242-bar long piece belongs to one of these three settings or their inversions. This is a somewhat extreme example; the Air for example is far more loosely bound by motifs, but I stand by my point. When you look back on your fugue, ask yourself: what is it that ties the whole work together? To me, it's certainly not the subject! The lack of subject entrances aside, the head (very nicely composed) has a characteristic descending, dotted, pattern which completely disappears after the first few bars! The tail (also very nicely composed) comprise of a descending scale and a rising seventh chord in quavers. Both of these elements return very rarely for the rest of the piece. So, if your core musical idea isn't actually the subject, what is it?

I think before anything else, you need to work on the ritornello theme a little - it is for the moment way too short. The descending fourth - ascending second harmonic sequence you have written so far however is fine. Afterwards, think carefully about what you want to do for the stuff between the ritornello theme statements. There isn't really a particularly interesting melodic line at the moment.

Hi all! Here's another fragmentary tripartite aria - it's about halfway complete. What do you think about it? What about the word setting?

New year, new project: a cantata! This will be the first (out of four) aria, featuring the timeless classic of solo flute & tenor duo. The structure will likely end up being A-B-B' separated by both complete and incomplete instrumental ritornellos. Note that the score is currently very messy with missing figurings. A few thoughts: What would be a suitable libretto? The second aria will employ Goethe's poem "Wanderer's Nightsong", so anything in that ballpark will be great. I am once again focusing on making the playback sound as good as possible. Are there any good soundfonts for Baroque music (without much vibrato)? How does the playback currently sound? MIDI-like or close to real music? Are there any parts which sound obtrusive or weird? Any other comments warmly welcomed!

Here's my chorale harmonisation of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"! It might get used as a chorale in a hypothetical cantata...Who knows!

Hi @gaspard Thank you! The Overture was inspired by two separate sources. The "prelude" from the first section of BWV 552a ("St Anne" Prelude), and the "fugue" from the first movement of BWV 1066 (Orchestral Suite No. 1). I had Bach's French Overture heavily in mind though when I architected the whole suite. Just like it, I wanted eight movements, extremely strong and characterful opening, closing statements and a central movement, and above all: contrast between the movements. Composing is only a hobby of mine and unfortunately I do it very very slowly and carefully - it's why I don't (or rather, can't!) write stuff more often.

Thank you so much!

Hey @PCC, sorry about the late reply! I suppose so - it's my fulfilment of a childhood dream: to compose something substantial (e.g. a full sonata) that I am extremely proud of. Composing has always been only a hobby of mine, and I've made countless ambitious plans in the past to make this happen. What has always happened is either me losing interest or lacking inspiration, leaving a few movement sketches as a result. That is, until now! The inclusion of Littleroot Town and Row Your Boat are indeed both references to my childhood. I grew up with Pokémon Emerald, and in high school I've enjoyed composing fugues using well-known nursery rhymes (e.g. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) or other ridiculous themes (e.g. the Mii Channel Theme), sharing them with friends. Row Your Boat especially has been an extremely obvious choice to me. It fits the specification of being gigue-like, and I managed to weave lots of rich fugal techniques and architecture into something that is ultimately just some light-hearted fun. Absolutely! Waves of nostalgia especially hit every time I hear the brass-laden tunes of gen 3. Interesting observation! What do you find Romantic? The augmented sixths or the borrowed chords perhaps?

This is the updated, final version of my Baroque keyboard suite, in the style of Bach. Overture Allemande Courante Air Scherzo and Trio Sarabande Bourrées Gigue Duration: 35:10 For details on the suite as a whole (including its architecture), and of the individual movements, please refer to commentary.pdf.

I am almost done revising the whole suite. Below I've attached what (hopefully) can be considered the final version of this overture! Much of the editing has been done for harmonic and playability reasons. It's nowhere as perfectly playable as Bach's 6-part ricercar, but I think it's a vast improvement from the previous edition.

Hi @lucasa223. Can you provide scores we can look at?