firsty_ferret

I enjoyed listening to this! Very nicely done! Did Bach's B minor suite have any influence on this one? It has the same instrumentation. I played the flute part in a performance of that and the way Bach writes gives the flute quite a lot of concertante style writing in the episodic material of the fugue, but I only saw this happen once where the violin and the flute weren't doubling and this was only a relatively short section (and not particularly virtuostic). I notice that they double for the entirety of the section before the fugue also. In later movements are you planning to give the flute more of a role to play other than this doubling of the violin? Also is it customary in these kind of binary movements to repeat sections so instead of AB it goes AABB? The style is really nice and the counterpoint is fantastic, as has already been said! Looking forward to the other movements! Oscar

I fixed my speakers (well sort of, I'm using a set of BlackBerry headphones...) I'm afraid I can't add much to what has already been said. I enjoyed it, The organ accompaniment worked really well and you controlled any dissonance really well. I was reminded of minimalism with the organ part too, was this the style you were going for? If not I'd probably give it a role other than providing harmonies for a few bars. The only thing I really disliked was that I didn't feel it went full circle, the middle section worked well but I personally would have tried to recap some of the material earlier on in the piece, maybe bringing back the much-discussed right hand part for a time towards the end before dying out, but honestly that's just a personally preference I have. Great piece! I'll watch out for your future posts ;) Oscar

Thanks for the listen. I've put quite a bit of my work on since I first started on YC but nothing other than this since the new site went up. I've got a couple of months before I begin university so I plan to complete a load of compositions so I should be putting some more on soon :)

I meant the software and the notation font - I've been using Sibelius 6 but it's difficult sometimes to get a score as clear and crisp as this.

The sound on my computer isn't working at the moment, but I'll comment on the organ part which people are talking about! The semiquavers in the right hand certainly do look like they will be an issue. The main problem for me wouldn't be that it was such a repetitive movement, but would be the particular fourths (I'll call them fourths since most of them are, I can only see a couple of places where thirds come in at a glance) which you are oscillating between. As for the issue of the hand cramping up due to repetition, I think this could well depend on the organ; I'm guessing you would voice these on the swell rather than the great and quite a few organs have fairly 'light' swell keys which would help reduce any cramping. Most organs I have played have lighter swells, particularly in the range the right hand is within, than a piano. As for the particular fourths you move between, there are some which look like they'd be OK; personally I find moving from a perfect fourth to a tri-tone (and vice-versa) fairly easy such as you have in bar 43. There's a piano piece by Gershwin called Novelette in Fourths so if you can listen to a recording of that (there's bound to be a few at the minute; it was selected for the new ABRSM piano syllabus I think) it might provide some ideas about what is ergonomically easier to play. I was going to suggest possibly omitting the lower note of the first of the fourths throughout the bar, but from the reviews you've had it looks like it would be a shame to remove it as it could alter the effect you create. One more note on the organ part is the foot pedal; you keep it very low in it's range throughout the piece. There's nothing wrong with this, but the combination of stops you use could well mean that the foot pedal has a different timbre and exploiting the higher end of it's register is something you could add if you wish. It might be nice in places where the harmony begins to intensify, as the piece reaches it's climax, to add a rising counter melody with the right foot against the full force of the choir whilst the left foot sustains those long bass notes. You'd have to be careful with the intervals you chose though in order to make it sound smooth only using one foot! It certainly looks interesting! I'm looking forward to fixing my sound and I'll comment more once I've heard the whole thing. PS - I know it's already been said, but what a fantastically presented score! Do you mind if I ask what software and fonts you used? I'll post more soon! Oscar.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you felt the Baroque too. Your suggestion about changing the E is quite a good idea, so I think I'll implement that. It's funny that you found the fugue much less interesting - personally I prefer the fugue and found it far more interesting to write! Cheers again, Oscar

Hi Guys, It's been a while since I posted on here, so I thought I'd test out all these fantastic upgrades I've seen being implemented. This is a relatively short Prelude and Fugue I wrote a couple of years ago now. My aim was to create something fairly Neo-Baroque but with a Contemporary feel. It's instrumented for flute, oboe, harp (I think idiomatically, although I'm not that familiar with harp writing) and strings. My main concern is the harmony, especially the modulation to the major in the prelude. Any comments/criticism would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Oscar Prelude and Fugue for Orchestra

I was about to start a thread along almost exactly the same lines as this one... Thank you for the information everyone has provided for the OP... I found it highly useful also :happy:

It also goes back to the original temperaments where a flat key would sound VERY different to a sharp one because the intervals between semi-tones were not logarithmically equal. I like the piece; I agree with what you say about 'lux' it does seem to set well... I'm writing vocal music at the moment myself so it's always nice to see what other composers are up to (Morivou, I know we spoke several months ago and you gave me a hand starting a lied and I promise I will post it soon but I can't until September because I have ended up submitting it for my A-level composition).

In my opinion pretty much anything by Schumann

Hi, I liked this piece in parts, mostly the beginning and the ending. The main part I didn't like was in the middle, specifically bars 18-21, but I'm not overly sure why (sorry I can't be more specific!). I think it was when the melody was introduced lower in the left hand, I just didn't like the dissonance, and muddy feel of the low notes and I also didn't feel like it developed the material you had there up to bar 22. Of course that could just be me, I'm not a fan of this kind of tonality by any stretch of the imagination. I think my favourite parts were those quavers in bars 7-9 (which I think could have been used more later) and those chords that came in at bar 22; I felt it really brought the piece to a conclusion nicely. Just some of my thoughts; I think to have written that in a day is incredible. Thank you for posting I enjoyed listening to your work, Oscar

Hi, I really enjoyed listening to this piece very much. I've recently taken an interest in these kind of songs for solo voice with piano accompaniment and am currently in the middle of writing my own... so I found looking at anothers work really very interesting! I must agree with how long in that I preferred the piano part to the voice part. I loved the writing of the accompaniment but I think the voice part could have made more use of some of the little melodies hinted at in the accompaniment part to make the two really fit together nicely. Your use of harmony was really lovely and you used a nice chunk of the baritones range to reflect everything. Your choice of harmony was good and really did reflect the words I felt. I particularly liked your contrasting legato and more detached styles in the accompaniment to portray different moods - verrry nice! I enjoyed listening to this; thank you for posting! Out of curiosity which was written first; the words or the music? Oscar

Hi, I like this piece quite a lot; it gets the concepts across and presents them in an easily understandable way. I think the baritone is a good choice of voice for this because the poetry, to me, conjures the idea of a labourer and I would associate this with a baritone. As far as I can make sense of the poetry there are two themes that run along simultaneously; a journey happening both physically and in the mind. I feel you capture the physical ideas well particularly in the voice part (for instance on the word 'travel' you move the melody in the voice to a previously unexplored area of the voice's range) but I had my doubts about some of the mental aspects. I interpret the mental journey to be thinking about spending time with a loved one once the physical journey and fatigue is over however in parts I didn't think this was conveyed too well (a lot of the melodic material related to parts that you had associated with the physical journey and so I didn't feel there was enough of a distinction between the two). The only part of the song I didn't like was the A major chord on the word 'see' (the line of the sonnet being 'Looking on darkness which the blind do see'). I felt that at this point on the sonnet took a far darker tone (darkness, shadows, seeing her face anew ect.) and I didn't feel the cadence 'fitted'. Perhaps recapping some of the earlier melodic material in a minor key would have achieved this? The piano writing was nice - you created some nice textures - although I have to say I wasn't a fan of the tremolos. I particularly liked the diminution of the earlier vocal material recapped in the left hand of the piano with those spread chords in the right hand with the flowing melody in the baritone over the top. The cadenza section confused me. I thought it was going to go into a recitative section but it ended abruptly and was followed quickly after by the ending of the song. I felt these last 5/6 bars or so could have been extended slightly (perhaps an independent piano section?). Hope my review helps, just some suggestions :) Thank you for posting, Oscar