schrodingasdawg

Lighting and temperature inspire me. I get the most inspiration at sunrise/sunset and dusk-like lighting when the temperature is around 15 centigrade. Especially if the sky is overcast.

Honestly, I think Op. 130 is better with the alternate ending, and the Grosse Fuge on its own ... somehow, the fugue seems too big (er, not sure how to put it: too grand, too self-contained) for the rest of the piece. Oddly, I think of the ode to joy in his ninth symphony in the same way. But I'm sure it's just me. After all, it seems popular to include Grosse Fuge on CD's with Op. 130, sometimes in place of the alternate ending. (I've heard somewhere they're doing that a lot with live performances, too, but I don't get out much and listen to most my music on CD. Would you happen to know if this is true?)

I love Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, if that counts ... not a full multi-movement string quartet, but still. Other Beethoven quartets are great, too: Op. 132 in particular. And then there's Bartok 4 and 5, Shosty 4, 7, 8, and 11 ... and that's about it. Never been much of a string quartet guy, but these pieces are amazing.

Your site attacked me with awesome organ music. I'm sorry that I can't offer useful advice for improving the chaconne. Still, I think it was pretty cool. I don't think the theme is too complicated, and it certainly doesn't preclude it from being a chaconne (it sounds like a chaconne, after all). It has a nice rhythm to it, and the pauses in particular (especially at 2:15) provide a powerful drive.

Sakura, the infamous Japanese folk tune, has long been one of my favorite melodies. Sadly, I'm not particularly fond of any of the pieces I've heard based on that melody, so a few years back, I decided to have a go at my own piece. I'm not really much of a composer (science major, I don't play any instruments, and I usually only write a three-minute sketch once every few months), but I think I got something decent here. I wrote a four-minute fugue-like piece on the melody, rewrote it from scratch, revised it a few times, and got the piece (an eight-minute fugue-like composition) I'm attaching. My original conception was for it to be a piano piece. However, there are a few measures that are unplayable on piano, and even those that are playable are (from what my pianist friends and acquaintances have related to me) very awkward to play. So, for the past two years, I've just left it as it is: a midi piece. However, midi has such an unfulfilling sound. The timbres are shallow, there isn't the human element, etc. The problem is (putting aside the fact that I have no connections to any serious musicians) that I have no idea what instruments I should score the piece for. It's in three parts, and each of the parts should sound timbrally very similar. I was wondering if anyone could suggest potential instrument combinations, or considerations I should take to try to determine what instrument combinations to try. Perhaps, as long as I'm here, any constructive, destructive, or even deconstructive criticisms (about the differance?) of the piece---what I should do to improve it, especially before even considering trying to find real musicians to perform it---that you may have can be offered. I'd appreciate them greatly. By the way, I apologize that the score is NWC format. I don't have Sibelius or Finale (which seem to be popular here ... and everywhere, for that matter), just NWC. Koukuuzakura.mid Koukuuzakura.nwc

Mahler demanded that the orchestra be silent for five minutes between two of the movements of his second symphony. I think it was the first and second movements. I don't know that anyone actually does this, though. John Cage's 4'33" isn't really supposed to be silence, but the music is supposed to be all the sound that can be heard in the room where the music is being performed. (Substitute other places for "room" where necessary.) That is, it's an aleatoric musique concrete piece, rather than just being silence. Honestly, I don't particularly like it, but eh, it was an idea, and some people do. As for using silence within otherwise non-silent pieces, this seems pretty normal to me. At the very least, you can give one voice a rest so that it doesn't become trite, and can be enjoyed more in places where the voice is not silent. This applies even to the melody voice in homophonic music, or to monophonic music. I think it's pretty normal, even, to have jazz solos where the instrument doing the solo goes silent for a few seconds. And, of course, there are dramatic pauses, e.g. rests with a fermata. Like at the end of the first contrapunctus in the Art of Fugue... And, of course, there are many other things that can be done. And I think like all other ideas that can be used in a musical piece, spans of silence (whether long or short) can be a useful or a detrimental effect, depending on how it's used.

Damn, I only head the organ version before. It sounds a lot better on harpsichord.

Uh... well, Lera Auerbach is 'young', but I dunno about her being popular. How old are those guys/gals in Bang on a Can? Prolly too old ... ...or, you can check this wiki page: List of 20th-century classical composers by birth date - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia It's wiki, so it's prolly not comprehensive, but it's a start ...

Agreed.

First of all, that fugue lesson is damn awesome. I mean both the actual lesson---the way it's taught---and the fugue. I have a somewhat dumb-sounding question (rather, maybe a few related questions): does the way that the subject is harmonized always have to be the same? If not/if so, is this related to your use of the phrase "harmonic statement of the subject" in any way? Well, I suppose another question as well. When writing fugues that use fancy contrapuntal techniques like stretto, how often does one write a theme and later look for such possibilities, as opposed to planning out a subject so that such techniques are possible? And a third question: when writing a fugue, how often is the form (er, rather, what keys you'll modulate to and such) planned out before getting into the exposition? Thanks in advance for any answers.