aerlinndan

In general, yes, actually. Juilliard, for example, gives very few merit-based scholarships, while on the other hand they are extremely generous in meeting all or nearly all of a student's demonstrated financial need. So if you are one of those (lucky) individuals who appeals to have a very small Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) after filling out the FAFSA, this is definitely to your benefit when it comes to applying to the big-name conservatories. Of course, all schools have their own set of requirements for applying for financial aid. The Manhattan School of Music, for example, requires everything but the kitchen sink in their financial aid application process. Of course, one may argue this helps get a better picture of the applicant, but it can be a big pain when you're applying to 5 or 6 schools.

I just listened to the first movement, and I do have a few comments. First of all, I really like your voice-leading in the 3/4 sections. The harmonies sound fresh while still being rooted in tonality, and I think the reason your progressions work is that you don't just move randomly from one chord to another: you conceive of your sonorities as independent voices that add up to a whole sound, and this is a good way of making sure your music flows well from one moment to another. So! Good job there. The main complaint I have is your choice to call this piece a sonata. The first movement of a sonata is usually in a clear sonata form, whereas this movement sounds like it is in ABA (ternary) form with a coda utilizing material from the B section. This may have been what QC was referring to when he mentioned the piece sounds 'aimless'; when you tell your listener that he or she is going to be listening to a sonata, and then give him or her music that is not so clearly in sonata form, it can be very misleading. Use the word 'sonata' for the title of your piece, and the educated listener will be listening for the first and second themes, the development, and the return of the first theme (just to name a few of the most basic aspects of the sonata form). Now I think your piece is perfectly coherent, at least from a form point of view, and I disagree with QC that it doesn't contain enough transitional material. (MIDI tends to make everything sound marionettish, and good musicians will be able to play the piece in such a way that the switches between sections don't sound so jarring. If you don't believe me, go listen to any good pianist play pretty much any piece by Franz Liszt.) However, if there is one area where your piece lacks coherence, I think it is harmonic coherence; the harmonic language you use in the 3/4 section and that of the 7/8 section is too different. In the former you have this really cool pandiatonic mood going on with occasional forays into related key-areas, whereas in the latter the language is much simpler, more angular, more tightly woven around a key center. The problem, I think, is that the combination of harmonic AND metric contrast between these two sections makes them sound as if they're coming from completely different pieces of music. Of course, you can certainly object to this argument, and name any one of hundreds of classical pieces containing even more divergent material within a single movement; however, I think that the brevity of this movement makes the extreme contrast of material a little harder to justify. I hope you find my comments helpful. Once I hear back from you, I'll delve into the other two movements.

Some fun facts about Eric Whitacre: -Played in rock bands throughout high school. -Entered college not knowing how to read music, and had not ever sung in a choir till he got to college. -Struggled with reading music even throughout grad school at Juilliard, where his music theory T.A. became his fiancee (which, according to him, was more than a little helpful for passing the course) -Currently has a commission from the London Philharmonic and Symphony Chorus. Also, he's the nicest guy in the world. He came to USC to conduct three new works that he wrote. Our choir recorded the pieces for a demo CD that will be sent out with the new works. I got a chance to introduce myself to him. He's so friendly and warm, and it's great to see that someone who has achieved as much fame as he has not allowed it to go to his head. He tried to recruit me for his opera/musical/whatsit, "Paradise Lost," which premieres in Los Angeles this summer, but I had to turn it down because I won't be sticking around in this city for the summer.

In addition to many of those listed above, I enjoy the earlier symphonies of David Diamond. Also, Corigliano's first symphony is a really great piece.

This is a lovely piece of music. What is there to say? Probably one of the most intrinsically emotional newly composed pieces of music I've heard in a long time. And rightfully so. My advice to you about style is: don't waste your time worrying about whether your voice is 'your own' or not. This piece obviously came from a deeply intuitive place in you, and in that sense it is completely 'your style' and there is no need to worry if it sounds like a combination of a Beethoven slow movement and the last movement of Mahler's 9th (though I'd say you're in some damn good company!). It is your style, and as you grow, so too will it grow. My condolences for your loss. I hope you find a pianist to play this well for you. Your friend deserves it, and you as the composer deserve it, too.

Hey Morivou! Nice little piece in a lot of ways. But there is one thing I want to address, and it's something I've seen across several of your works. I think it is your biggest weakness as a composer right now: rhythm. Your rhythms end up being very square. By this I mean every new rhythmic idea tends to fall on the beat, and rhythms change abruptly, seemingly without any purpose behind them other than the intellectualized realization of the need to change a rhythm. I would suggest inundating yourself with the scores of Bach, and then of Chopin, to see how each, in his own time and way, dealt with the problem of rhythm. In Bach, look for the interplay of weak and strong, as well as how the rhythms of the various lines contribute to the overall harmonic structure. At times in some of his fugues there is a note on every sixteenth note, but it never sounds like incessant pelting. How does he achieve this. Now open a Chopin score and take a look at a melody (the nocturnes or waltzes would be good for this). Look how supple Chopin's rhythms are. They fit into a pulse-skeleton, certainly, but never are they boring. They sound like something the voice might sing were it to sing in the rhythm in which we speak...except in Chopin's music we never find out the words. Closely related to this is the problem of texture. In one phrase you switch between a two-voice invention structure and block chords several times. This is not good. It detracts from coherence. Pick something, and stick with it for a while, and when it changes, let that change be a result of actual musical development, not random outbursts. That's probably being a little too harsh. But I'm just trying to give you some perspective on your music that you may not have.

An evening with Nico? You forgot the awkward sex. >_> <_< In all seriousness, though, I liked it. What else is there to say? Though I don't think we should all get into the habit of writing pieces about each other. Some of us (ahem) have egos that are plenty large enough as it is.

Chris, these pieces are beautiful. I've listened to the first three and wanted to stop and give some comments now. I like the coherent textural style that you have set up across the first three movements. It shows that these pieces are related, that they are all part of the same cyclic unit. And yet each of the three has its own distinct character, as it should, given that each of the poems is its own separate statement. Unlike QC, I do not object to some of the seemingly contradictory accenting that you have placed on certain syllables throughout these pieces. There is no obligation for a composer to put every strong syllable on the highest or longest note of the phrase. On the contrary, often a prolonged high "and" or "the" on which the soprano must float before coming down to an accented word is a delightful musical effect; of course you must find the musicians that have the sensitivity to pull this off. I think the main reason your text-setting works (to my ear) boils down to the fundamental rhythmic aspect in these pieces. You have set the text in a rhythmic style which, while free enough to follow the texts, still makes sense in terms of the underlying pulse. The rhythms of the soprano both define and contribute to your sense of what constitutes a musical phrase, as well as a literary thought. A good soprano and pianist will realize that the time signatures are rather arbitrary, and that it is the phrase, not some organized division of beats, that is the final arbiter of emphasis in this piece. Have you considered removing time signatures altogether in these works? Samuel Barber and Olivier Messiaen did it for many of their piano pieces and vocal works, as did several other composers; such an idea is not practical for works with larger ensembles, but for the intimate medium of voice and piano I think it will actually increase the quality of any performances of this piece. If there is any constructive criticism I have about these pieces, it is that I think you could have used more of the expressive potential of the piano in these first three movements. I say this with reservation because there is indeed a certain charm in the bare simplicity of your piano writing; however, in a lot of the climactic moments when the soprano is screaming out above the staff, I was aching to hear some running arpeggios or some scales or something that uses the less block-chordal textures of the piano. Another way of saying it is, why not let your piano writing come to more extreme climaxes and reposes? Because you certainly achieve this with your vocal writing. Of course, if your musical intuitions told you to write the piano part this way, then I wouldn't touch a note, but it is something to think about for future works involving the piano. Also, whichever pianist you find to play this piece, make sure you take a quick glance at their hands before asking them to play! Some pianists do not have the reach of a tenth, and without that, you'll have to contend with a lot of rolled chords that you probably never intended. (If you're looking for a pianist at Oberlin, consider either InSoo Jung or Chien-Lin Lu; both were good friends of mine at Interlochen, and they are marvelous pianists and consummate musicians. Mention that you know Michael Alfera if you need a way to strike up a conversation. :-) ...And I think they both have big-enough hands.) Also make sure your soprano is a musician, and not just a singer. You know what I mean. Nothing in this piece is impossibly difficult to sing, but you want someone that will faithfully reproduce your notes, not just give approximations. I will listen to the others soon, but I have been putting off getting to the piano all day long and I gotta go before it gets too late!

You guys rock. Thank you so much for your kind comments. I'll admit it, for a while I was worried that I had heard the extent of the reviews I was going to get for this piece. Ah, yeah, this may be more due to the way that we performed the thing. Or not. I'll think about this. It's got to close off somehow. Maybe one sustained chord with a low F# in the piano to round it off. But I see what you mean. As for the (sometimes overweening) contrast between sections, I have no response other than...yup. Harmonic coherency is a scallop, and I would say that it, more than any other parameter (including phrase, overall form, melodic and rhythmic content, etc), is the thing I struggle with most as a composer. There are sections that wander far, and then there are sections that do something as simple as IV-I. How I am to reconcile these seemingly contradictory languages is something I'm still working on. So I'll let you know once I've figured it out. (AKA, check back in twenty years.) In the meantime, though, your comment is well-placed and well taken. However, I feel uncomfortable to say the least arguing against your musical judgment. These are wonderful works, with many a special moment (on several occasions I couldn't help but skip back five seconds just to experience some of them again). Yeah. As I said, harmonic language is extremely important to me as a composer, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about and developing my harmonic voice to the point where the progressions happen almost intuitively. While I can't really explain an intuitive process, I can explain the sorts of things I do to get these more extended sounds in my ear. For example, if it isn't painfully obvious by, oh, the third page or so, I am a big fan of stacked fourth chords. When I am composing a harmonic progression, I tend to hear stacked fourth chords in the middle of my harmonic progressions just as if they were traditional major or minor sonorities. But to get to this point, I had to do a lot of playing around with the fourth chords. For example, sit down at the piano and play an E. Can you immediately sing the A and D above it, without having to think, as easily as you can sing the G# and B to form the major triad? If not, then the stacked fourth chord is not as intuitive a part of your harmonic vocabulary as is the major triad. (And obviously so...in daily life, and in classical music in general, tertian sonorities predominate!) So really it's just a matter of playing around like this: singing the kinds of sonorities that I like, from top to bottom and bottom to top, middle outwards, improvising with them, until I'm so comfortable with them that they come up in my inner ear during the composition of a piece. Of course, you don't want to do this with harmonies you don't like. Here are a few basic sonorities that I find myself incorporating into my pieces: 1) (as mentioned) the stacked fourth chord (3, 4, or even 5 notes) 2) minor chord with added 4th (sometimes even major) 3) major chords with added 9ths (especially in 2nd inversion) 4) Major chord with scale degree 4 in the bass (so e.g. B-F#-A#-C#) 5) minor chord with scale degree 4 in the bass (A-E-G-B) 6) minor and major 7th chords (these are pretty traditional, but I like to use them in non-functional-harmony ways) Now these are just individual chord types; I'm also a fan of the polychord, a technique that works really well when you have contrasting sonorities to work with (such as strings and piano). A polychord, for those who do not know, is a sonority which the ear can perceive as two separate chords sounding at once. So if you play a C major chord below middle C and a D major chord an octave above middle C on the piano, you're playing a polychord. These make me happy, too, and I sometimes find it fun to sing a melody while playing a simple progression in the "wrong" key. (Just like Charles Ives was forced to do as a kid, but I enjoy it. Try it out with C major accompaniment and D major melody. Just don't get lazy and start singing F-naturals!) My second etude of my Three Etudes for piano (also on this board; yes, this is a shameless plug) is actually a study in polychordal piano technique. For real composers who use polychords, check out Stravinsky (Petrouchka and Rite of Spring), many of Debussy's Preludes for Piano, and like any Swedish choral composer of the past fifty years. I'm not sure if that answers your question. Actually it probably sounds more like an incoherent rambling than anything else; I'll be the first to admit that I'm still working out exactly what my harmonic style is to be. That's very kind of you to offer. I'll let you know when I stumble into any problems. :-)

Must you do something with it? Are your musical intutions telling you this piece must be longer, or are you looking at your minute-and-a-half nocturne and telling yourself that it has to be longer because nocturnes are not typically that short? If you can't think of anything else to do with it, you need to seriously ask yourself if perhaps the piece is done. Then, and only then, if you've decided that it needs to be longer, perhaps the following comments will help. Whether you realize it or not, there's actually a lot of development going on in this minute and a half. The harmonies are extremely varied, and your melody seems to grow into, and out of, itself, in varying combinations. This is good. If you feel that it's too short, I think this might actually be because the piece develops too fast. And this problem is something every young composer struggles with. We have a thousand ideas and try to cram about 998 of them into each new piece we do, when sometimes it's a much better idea to slow down, let things unfold at their own natural, easy pace. (Kind of like a good relationship! :-D) But no, we're young, we want to rush through everything. I hope this gives you something to at least think about. I don't know if I would go back into this piece now and start trying to artificially lengthen it (musical Viagra?). It seems rather complete to me. I think the best idea for you would be to look at this piece again, understand where it develops at a good pace and where it goes too fast, and take your newfound knowledge to the next piece you write. Keep this up. I expect very good things from you in the future.

I hope my comments didn't offend you personally, QC. I guess it's just a personal soapbox of mine, and I didn't mean to catch you in the crossfire. Besides there is a big difference between you and me. You're a composition teacher, aren't you? As such you have to be thinking of methods to help your students gain a better sense of compositional craft. And, well, I'm just a student, so the only composer who I'm responsible for is myself. I dunno. Maybe one day I'll come around. :-)

These are very cool drawings. I think the idea of sketching out a conception in some non-musical form is a really great idea for many composers, as it gives you something more concrete to work from. The problem, though, is exactly as you state it at the top of your page: you can do all the planning you want, but in the end your ideas are going to go where they're going to go. And this is completely fine! There is no obligation to stick to some preconceived scheme -- the scheme is just a starting point, I believe, something that gives a framework within which your musical sensibilities can work (or a framework to wander from, should your intuitions tell you to do so). In fact there are some professional composers who have an even more elaborate and precise method of drawing up sketches before starting a piece. One composer, whose name escapes me at the moment, draws pieces on graph paper, and the horizontal aspect (somehow) represents time and the vertical aspect (somehow, even more fuzzily) represents pitch content.

Yes, that is pretty amazing. Well, whether you like him or not, Mahler is required listening for serious composers. His pervasive influence on Western music is undeniable; he is an inextricable part of the musical tradition and influenced countless composers after him. If you don't like Mahler, that says something about you -- not necessarily a bad thing, but it probably has something to do with a short attention span and a refusal to let a work take its time in saying what it wants to say. If you don't like Mahler, you're probably the kind of person that likes short stories over novels. Still, the catharsis at the end of an hour-long Mahler symphony is like nothing else; it takes precisely that long to get there, to say it, and it couldn't be any other way. Here's to Mahler's Third. From my days as a trombonist to now (when I haven't touched the trombone in years save to blast out my school's fight song when they won the Rose Bowl to taunt my University of Michigan neighbors) it's still my favorite.

A composer should write music of a length (and style and form and content) of entirely his or her own choosing, or at least as much as is possible (commissions and other obligations sometimes require a specific length or something like that). If this means that the music that is inside of you aching to get out is a 45-minute long symphony (though that is highly doubtful), it means you should write a 45-minute long symphony. Of course, as several have already remarked, we live in a faster-paced world. We live in a world of news bytes, readers' digest, google, mapquest, and a bunch of things that make it possible to do a large amount of tasks in a ridiculously short amount of time (at least compared to when before the technological advances came out). Since art reflects the culture in which it was produced (or is it the other way around?--ha, we all wish) it is only natural that in classical music we would see a push towards shorter pieces -- pieces that say more in less time. And yet there is nothing that can replace a Mahler symphony. No five-minute piece, no matter how well-written or well-performed, will ever come anywhere close to the massive buildup and release of ecstatic emotion in store at the end of Mahler's third symphony. It's the great romantic dilemma of our time: something in us aches to return to the romantic ideal (whatever that may be) and yet the very constitution of our world often prevents that. Thus in the 21st century where there is no specific 'movement' to speak of but many composers doing many various things, we need the composers who are writing the hour-long opuses just as much as we need the composers writing the five-minute whiz-bangers. This is why I say that a composer must write what he/she feels compelled to write. It takes all types to keep the art form alive.

Yes, Schirmer is notorious for bad fingerings, as well as wrong notes outright, and a zillion unnecessary expressive markings. If you're serious about learning a piece, try to get an Urtext edition (which basically means the piece is being published as it was originally published, with no editorial intervention) -- and for this Barenreiter and Henle can't be beat.