J. Lee Graham

Greetings All: Sharing my Viola Sonata on this Thanksgiving-Eve. The style I was trying to emulate is early Beethoven, in my own inimitable way. The parts are equal - in fact, as was often the case in Beethoven's sonatas, the Piano takes the upper hand about as often as the Viola does. Hope you enjoy! Composed: April 19 - July 4, 2022 at Austin. Style: Classical, ca. 1790-1800. Duration: 18:10. Electronic Rendering by Finale 26 music notation software’s "Human Playback" with NotePerformer 3 artificial intelligence assisted interpretation.

This is quite an accomplishment, and intensely beautiful. I'm not qualified to say much more than that because of my rooting in Classicism, but you have my compliments. I hope the dedicatee appreciates it.

@Churchcantor Almost nobody is familiar with Jommelli, and more is the pity. His Requiem is in E-flat major, yet it still sounds appropriately sombre. There are several good performances available on YouTube. Here's a link to my favourite:

@Monarcheon I see what you mean. Luckily, though so far I have used high-D a few times, it was only on short notes, if I remember my own piece rightly.

Really??? Jeez, I remember paying something I thought was reasonable, a one time payment. I've never been charged again. Maybe it's getting popular. Sorry guys!

Wow! Some surprisingly good counterpoint, though it's difficult to see how it will all fit together without the text underlay. Consciously or not, you've taken a cue from Niccolo Jommelli (1714-1774) in scoring your Requiem for voices and strings alone...his Requiem (1756) was the most popular and often requested of its day, until Mozart wrote his in 1791. The sparing orchestration makes it more likely to get played. I agree with ComposaBoi on just about everything he said. Measure 11: The tenor part goes dangerously low, down to B below tenor C; consider a D instead if it won't mess up your counterpoint. Measure 17: Awkward for Violin I - the C on beat 3-1/2 is icky to try to reach down to there, it means shifting a third down the fingerboard for one note, then shifting back up again; consider the G above instead. Measure 31: Odd ending, it seems to me. There is no third in the chord, and while that's not without precedent, I don't feel like it works here. Consider an E-flat as the final note in the Soprano and Violin I. Show us more of this as you have it! Well done!

Howdy y'all! I'm writing an Oboe Quartet (Oboe, Violin, Viola, and 'Cello) and I'm wondering about the upper register of the Oboe. It's not exactly giving me fits, but I'm having trouble believing that the instrument is as limited as it seems to be, realistically. Being a Classicist, I tend to write parts that are intended to be playable on 18th Century instruments. I'm a string player, but have it on fairly good authority (and actual experience) that the Oboe, circa 1790-1800, was not really capable of playing anything above a D6 (D above high-C) reliably; there was a famous exception in the period, a virtuoso player named Friedrich Ramm (1744-1830) in Mannheim who was capable of playing an F6 (F above high-C), and it was for this player that Mozart wrote his celebrated Oboe Quartet in F, K. 370. In my own Sinfonia Concertante in C for Oboe, Bassoon, Fortepiano, Violin, 'Cello, and Orchestra, which was performed by the Austin Baroque Orchestra on period instruments (the oboe soloist's instrument was a copy of an original from 1806), I wrote a couple of E6s (E above High-C) that didn't come out well in performance, despite the excellence of the soloist otherwise, and that has made me hesitant to write anything in my other works for the oboe any higher than D6, even in my Oboe Concerto. Now I'm wondering if that register above D6 is difficult or unreliable on a modern Oboe. What do you guys think? I've had to rethink a couple of passages in this piece I'm working on, and I'd like to know if I'm being a little skittish. For that matter, if you think my experience with my Sinfonia Concertante was not representative of what a really good player should be able to play, I'd like to know that as well. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for your comments. I honestly don't know why I wrote this with the flute part on top. I suddenly was worried that all my other concerti were written this way as well, but I checked, and all the others were written correctly. So who knows? I consider myself a Classical Revivalist mostly, though I can and do write in other styles occasionally. As such, it has always been extremely important for me to be as authentic as possible, and I'm very glad that comes to the fore. I have my own personal style within Classicism, but my stuff is always going to smack a little of Mozart, Haydn, and early Beethoven (the latter of which I'm particularly attempting to emulate lately, with varying degrees of success). I was shooting for 1800 to 1810 as the specific pinpoint for much of this work, so it might not have seemed that groundbreaking during that later time frame, especially considering what Beethoven was doing, though I realize the 2nd movement especially sounds a bit earlier. As for scrolling score videos, Google an application called Bandicam. Shell out a few bucks for the full version, or your music might get covered with watermarks...it's not that expensive if I recall rightly. It's pretty easy to use.

Wow! I drop this here and look away for a moment (or several weeks), and y'all bless me with an embarrassment of riches in your comments! I'm so sorry I'm just now getting around to replying, but I've been a bit unwell. I suffer from Bipolar Disorder Type 2, which causes dramatic mood swings fairly frequently (I also have ADHD, but that's another story), and over the last couple of months I've been having a lot more bad days than good...some days I have trouble even getting out of bed, which is a pretty serious depression. I saw my physician recently, and he adjusted my medications, so I'm hoping to feel better more often soon. Today happens to be an exceptionally good day by recent standards, thank God. Thank you very kindly to all who listened and commented. I'm going to try to reply to various points and specific questions in these posts in the order they came below. I appreciate your complimenting the orchestration. I've never studied orchestration formally, I just put down what I hear in my head pretty much. Are you an oboist? Just guessing from your user name. I should probably post my oboe concerto and see what you (and others) think. Ah yes! That secondary theme is one of my favourite moments in the whole movement too...and you mentioning it gave you a similar feeling to Beethoven makes my heart flutter! 🙂 Oh my God! 😞 I had no idea! I suppose I've never actually looked at a score for a concerto. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Thanks! I'd love that too. There is a chamber orchestra in Wichita that performed my 9th Symphony a couple of years ago, I've thought of showing the score to their director to see what he thinks of it, and if he'd like to program. It of course calls for a first-rate flautist, but maybe he's got one in his back pocket. I'm going to take your suggestion and leave this piece just as is. Was it Beethoven who retorted, "it wasn't written for you" when someone complained that his work was unplayable? Everything is unplayable until some intrepid soul plays it. So, you liked my Polonaise eh! I'm very gratified. It still brings up the hairs on the back of my neck, especially the ending. I've written a number of Polonaise insertions in various movements of my work, but this is the first time, I'm pretty sure, that I made a whole movement out of one. It's so grand and expansive. I did some research online to see how the dance was actually done, and it's wonderful! I read somewhere that in Europe, and especially in Russia (and Poland I'm sure), the Polonaise was the first dance played, to give everyone the opportunity to show off their fabulous clothes. And yes, it was me who wrote that my favourite National Anthem is that of Poland, which amazingly enough is a Mazurka. I've written a stand-alone Mazurka as well, for strings, as part of my Sundry Dances collection. By all means, give your vision of blending the US and Polish National Anthems a try. They share the same metre, which is part of the puzzle solved already. Thank you! What inspired the piece? Nothing in particular. I was driving to my friend's house one day, and I came up with the idea for the opening theme out of thin air. it happens a lot like that to me. When I got home, I plugged it into Finale, and in a few hours, I had the orchestra introduction finished. I'm almost ashamed to say that I've never read an orchestration book. I taught myself orchestration, basically by writing down what I hear in my head...if I don't hear something in my head, but Finale playback sounds like something is missing, it's trial and error to find it out, but most of the time I hear things more or less fully formed in my head. I'm more like Mozart and less like Beethoven that way, though these days I'm trying to emulate early Beethoven more. Someone else here recommended Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's book, which I have been told is excellent. Hector Berlioz also wrote a "Treatise on Instrumentation" that I gather may even go even further afield, being that he was an extremely experimental composer for his time. Good luck! I didn't used to be a big fan of concerti either. It took me a long time to finally write a whole one (my Horn Concerto in E-flat of 2014). There are so many really great concerti that for a long time i just didn't feel like I had anything in particular to add to the pile. But my feelings have changed, and now I have several other concerti planned, though not started yet. I really want to write concerti for piano, violin, and 'cello. Thanks for your compliments and comments on all three of the movements. I'm so glad this piece made you feel "right at home!" And thanks for sharing this piece with your friends! By all means, if you'd like, subscribe to my YouTube page...I have literally hundreds of scrolling-score videos of almost all of my music that I consider worth sharing there. I can always use more subscribers. 🙂 I use an application call Bandicam. It's pretty easy to use. I recommend paying a few bucks to buy the full version of the software, or you'll have watermarks all over your music. Just set the area of the screen containing your score (in scrolling mode, preferably, if available on your notation software...I use Finale, for now anyway), hit F12 to start recording, then hit play in your notation software, and voila! When the piece is done, hit F12 again, and recording stops. The output is an MP4 file, uploadable to YouTube, and a WAV file. Hope that helps. Dear God, it's 4:17AM Central Daylight Time and I'm just now wrapping this up. Thanks again all of your for you kindness and generosity of spirit! All best!

Greetings! Haven't stopped by in a while, thought I'd take the occasion of winning the 20 Year Membership badge (!) to drop in and share a big something I finished recently. This is one of those pieces I have worked with, off and on, for many years - I began composing it in 2001 and just finished it this summer. I cannot account for exactly why it took me so long to bring this to completion, except that for much of that time I didn't feel worthy of the material I had sketched, and couldn't readily come up with ideas to match it in quality. This piece is in my usual Classical style, unusual mainly in that I have employed an exceptionally large orchestra, including three trombones. Ostensibly, it is written for instruments of the period, roughly 1800 to 1810, though I have it on good authority that the flute part is in places nearly unplayable on a flute of that time - not impossible, but extremely difficult in such places as the frightful two-octave ascending chromatic scale in the first movement, and the mortifying cadenza in the third. Ordinarily I would have edited the piece on such advice, but there comes a time when artistic vision must prevail, and this was one of those times. The opening movement is a standard Sonata-Allegro as typically modified for concerti in the Classical period. The second movement (Andante) is broad and expressive. The third movement is a Polonaise (Vivace alla Polacca) in the form of a Rondo. I hope you enjoy the piece, and as always I look forward to any comments you may have. Thanks!

Beautiful. It's hard for me to remove myself from the wonderful Bogoroditse Devo by Rachmaninov, with its ancillary expectations, but once I did, I just let this wash over me, and I enjoyed it very much. Very nice performance too, by the way. It's so good to see new music being written for the Russian Orthodox liturgy again, after a more than a century of silence.

A friend of mine sent me the following link this afternoon, regarding the impending demise of Finale, a music notation software platform I know many of you use. https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/end-of-finale-new-journey-dorico-letter-from-president/ I'm as broken-hearted about this as if I'd lost a family member or beloved pet. Users will be able to get support and the ability to install Finale on a new machine for a year from now, but after that, you're on your own. Finale will still run, but you won't be able to reinstall it on a new computer if you get one. They're recommending Dorico as a replacement. You'll have to export all your Finale files to a file format that Dorico will recognize. Dorico Pro, the highest tier they offer, will be available to Finale users for $149.00 for a limited time. There is also Chopin's notation software available here on YC, and Sibelius. I've been using Finale for more than 25 years and I can hardly imagine learning a new software at this late date, but I guess I'll have to. We all will.

I have done both - revision and abandonment. Most of my music written when I was young I have left alone, finished or not, regardless of their state of proficiency, because I consider it juvenilia and a record of who I was as a composer at that time. More recent works I'm more liable to revise as I learn or get better ideas. In any case, I don't regret anything I've done, except when I wasted time on things I wasn't ready for, such as a Mass setting when I was 12, and an opera at 13...both disastrous failures. I was definitely not ready, and I figured it out the hard way. I never made the mistake again, staying small and relatively simple all the way through high school and into adulthood. But even in my early 20s I was learning and making awful mistakes. I look back at my 1st symphony now, which was even performed, and I shake my head. It's terrible...good ideas, but very carelessly handled...the result of being a complete autodidact in composition. I heard once a saying that "he who always insists on teaching himself has a fool for a master," and I can definitely see the truth in that. But I had no one to teach me, and I wasn't about to sit on my hands waiting for someone to come along, so I did my best on my own. I don't regret a note of it, even if a lot of it is bad.

I'm in agreement with the previous posters. I think its a bit too soon for you to be composing something as grandiose as a piano concerto (incidentally, I've been composing for many years, and I still have never written one, because despite my experience, I know I'm not ready). I differ with Awsumerguy only in that the kind of bravery it takes to attempt something like this is surprisingly common among inexperienced composers, and more is the pity. Try your hand at some simpler things for a while. You'll actually learn more, and success feels a lot better than setting yourself up to fail. Seriously, good luck with your composing.

The story goes that Mozart was visited by a prospective student one day, who told the Master, "I want you to teach me how to write a symphony." Mozart said, "I think it would be best if we start with something simpler first, like Minuets." Indignant, the student retorted "But you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old!" Mozart calmly replied, "Yes...but I didn't have to ask how." The moral of the story is: do yourself a favour, and start small, especially if you're teaching yourself. I have been a member of YC for many years, and I have far too often seen young composers here with either little or no experience composing, trying to write symphonies, piano concertos, full string quartets, etc., things far too ambitious for their level. This is a waste of effort, more often than not. Start smaller, and build a foundation of experience upon which to build bigger things when you're really ready. Happy composing!