jymothias

I heard that Ligeti was going to write an Alice in Wonderland opera, too, but now he's dead :) so there's one less rival to worry about

Yes, the chromatic bit is impossible. There's lots of other sketchy harp stuff in here as well, but I forget where exactly. You should really check out this thread: http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/understanding-harp-4393.html and if you're really interested, this one too: http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/coposing-harp-ochestral-music-470.html They explain about how the harp works, why random things are impossible and why random things are ridiculously easy. I'm not so good at explaining stuff, and there was a lot there that I had no idea about anyway. Writing for harp is a little annoying at times. Good luck! Also, is there any way you could make a midi?

Beethoven 4 all the way. He has some amazing orchestral moments (especially the opening and the last bit of the 1st movement development), and while the music isn't neccesarily as profound as music from some of the other symphonies, the understated simple beauty of the 4th really touches me more than the other symphonies do.

I think he studied with Krenek. My school's wind ensemble played a piece of his last year, and I really liked it. He used Schoenberg's 12-tone system, but in contrast to Schoenberg's approach (a Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One Another), Perle tried to create heirarchies of tones within his rows (analogous to tonal heirarchies of tonics, dominants, subdominants, and so on) and other such relations between notes, reminiscent of tonal practice. He also wrote a book, Serial Composition and Atonality, which I started reading and never finished...:D If I have time when I get back to school, I may start reading it again, and if I find anything else out, I'll certainly post it here.

If you could add a horn, there's the Poulenc sextet

Flute, Oboe, Clarinet in Bb, Bassoon, Piano is a list of repertoire for the ensemble you seek... Of course, I've never heard of anything listed there except the Danzi, but oh well... You can download a Finale score to the Danzi here: Oliver's (mostly) Clarinet Music Page

Hey! This is a great piece. My one problem with it is a bit related to something Matusleo said (about the first part having one emotional character). During the entire orchestral introduction, you hug very close to D minor, which seemed a bit confined to me. When the violin came in, and especially in the development, recap and coda, you allow your harmonies to go all over the place, and it really kept me on the edge of my seat. I know that you want to be in D minor by the end of the intro, but I think that if you allowed yourself a bit more harmonic freedom in the intro, it would be just as striking as the rest of the movement and you would have a very powerful, direct, homogenous piece of music. Sounds great!

I like what you did to the first 4tet! Just out of curiousity, last life, what composers have you been listening to recently?

Hello! I liked the first movement, or at least bits of it. My problem is that it doesn't have enough time to "breathe", so to speak. The opening gesture (up to 0:21) is quite striking. Why not rest a few beats and then immediately repeat the gesture? I'm not saying you should, but it would be something I'd do, especially in a piece so concerned with repetions. I really like the (quarter-note? Sorry, I'm not looking at a score) triplets in the cello and the five-bar phrase that ends at (:21). These nifty rhythmic patterns seem not to appear again (when you use so many four-bar phrases, it makes the piece soung inorganic and a bit predictable; I don't know whether you want this or not). Why don't you re-use these rhythmic patterns? I'd say the piece could about twice as long and that it could benefit from you providing moments that people could hang on to, if you know what I mean. (I think that Abracadabra and Huckle would appreciate this as well) I also liked the 2nd movement best :) The only thing I didn't like about it were the parts where you went into arco; I'm not convinced that that needed to happen (although I did like the drone at 1:30). The second movement of Ravel's quartet, another great pizzicato movement, has a lot of interplay between pizz. and arco stuff; your movement didn't seem to have that, and the moments with arco seem too short to be percieved as different sections. When I listen I'm not sure what to think about them. If you want a change of timbre, there are plenty of those available within the pizzicato spectrum (there's a cool Bartok 4tet movement which is all pizzicato of various sorts). My orchestration book lists snap pizzes, nail pizzes, plectrum pizzes (with a pick), buzz pizzes, gliss. pizzes... and on and on. If you could sprinkle a few of those and move the arco sections back to pizz (maybe subdivide them if you want them sustained), I think it will have both enough variety and enough constant-ness for my taste, but again, this is my own taste. I think the last movement was the best-written of the three; the only flaw, I think, is that the ending (or rather, the introduction of the B and Bb ostinato) seems a bit abrupt. I wish I could write music like that though! I, personally, don't really see it as incidental music neccesarily, but that's because I've been listening to altogether too much minimalism lately :D. Nice job on all three pieces, though. I love the work you're doing with drones. I'll be quite interested to see the other 97 quartets!

Yeep! I'm afraid this post will likely be a case of too little too late, but I'll try. I like the distinction you made between the analytical approach and the romantic, emotional approach to listening. I too used to have trouble listening to Mahler 9 without resorting to dry analysis, but now find listening to it an amazingly powerful emotional experience. I'll tell you how I wound up with this, and hopefully that's some help... First of all, I got my hands on the score, and read all of Mahler's performance indications throughout the score; in this Symphony Mahler goes beyond the standard Allegro/Largo fare and writes markings like "With Rage" and "Like a funeral march", and a bunch more I can't remember at the moment. These poetic descriptions gave me something to hang on to, so to speak, and began to unlock the raw emotional power of the movement. Also try listening to the dramatic shape; first figure out what moments are climaxes (the obvious one is the moment of death- a huge return of the faltering heartbeat motif that opens the movement (dum-dum--DUM) over a seething tritone in low brass). Once you've found the climaxes, try to see how Mahler moves toward and away from them. You'll soon notice that this movement to and from climaxes is not simply up and down motion on the dissonance and decibel graphs. Rather, the growth and falling of the music is three dimensional, if you will. Does the music recoil in terror after this cataclysm? Are these notes _sure_ they want to build to the next peak, or would they rather fade away into nothingness? Are the climaxes themselves screams or celebratory, or maybe both at once? I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd reccomend finding moments you _can_ identify with and working outwards from those. I hope this is some help. Good luck!

Hi! This is my first time commenting on some-one else's music here, so I guess we're even! I really like your piece and I love the way you move between chords; you are able to move to harmonies that don't necessarily follow according to the theory rules gracefully and very convincingly (I especially love the F sharp major at 0:47). One little harmony gripe: the second chord (a diminished chord) is really dissonant compared to the sorrounding chords. If it were my piece, I'd prolly use a D major chord (not dissonant and leads to the G major), but that's just because I've been hating diminished chords lately :angry: Otherwise, to my ears, the chords follow naturally and the melodies are great. The rhythm is fairly predictable, which is neither good nor bad; my biased radical contemporary composer preferences usually tend towards things which are rhythmically spicier (the syncopations in the 1st movement of Beethoven's last Piano Sonata, op. 111, for instance). I loved the moments when you broke free from the expected rhythms, such as the slowing down arpeggiated B7 chord before the return to E minor (1:00-ish), but your harmonic motion prevents the rythms from being boring elsewhere in the piece, so you probably shouldn't worry about that much. Great piece! P.S. I can never think of clever titles either... :laugh:

Thanks! Since I wrote the piece, I have managed to change my compositional outlook around, and I now also favor a much more simple compositional style. My main problem with these is likewise that they're way too complex (and leave me no way to develop toward climaxes and so forth...) I'm really interested to see what becomes of these as I try to go back and revise them...

Hey folks! How Exciting! My vewy fiwst post! This is a concerto I wrote about a year and a half ago, for violin accompanied by clarinet quartet (instead of orchestra). It's prolly the best thing that I've written so far (at least that I've been able to finish) and I am trying to rewrite it. In my humble opinion, its weaknesses are its constantly thick texture and awkward transitions :happy: but I'm really curious to see what y'all think. The piece is based entirely on British and American Christmas carols and chants. It is in 3 movements plus an opening Chorale-Prelude which takes its material from the other movements. The files are as follows: file 1- Chorale-Prelude First Movement (starts at 0:53), based on "All Hayle to the Days", English traditional file 2-Second Movement, based on "O Little Town of Bethlehem" by Henry Walford Davies and "A solis Ortus Cardine (From Lands that See the Sun Arise)", a Sarum chant file 3-Third Movement, (my favorite movement) based on English traditional "This is the truth sent from above" Thanks for your interest! -j Sandberg-Violin Concerto-File1.mid Sandberg-Violin Concerto-File2.mid Sandberg-Violin Concerto-File3.mid