Thumbelina

07. Mrs. Fieldmouse, Mr. Mole.mp3

This suite of ten short movements tells the story of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale "Thumbelina," written in my best attempt at the Romantic idiom. For those not familiar with the story, find the full text here or a synopsis here.

This piece is the culmination of many, many hours of work for me, and I consider it my best work thus far. It lasts about 25 minutes total. Any feedback would be especially appreciated. Thanks for listening!

Hi Noah,

I really enjoyed this! It has such a wonderful late 19th century feel to it and creates a mystical world.

A few general comments after two trips through the score:

1. Be very careful about E#, B#, and any double-sharp spellings. Only use them when they make absolute sense.

2. The staccatissimo mark is often played with a sense of accent as well as short. I think your quarter note staccatissimos would be better off as 8th note staccatos followed by 8th rests.

3. You don't need to restate instrumentation between movements.

4. Only the title of the work gets its own page. Movement names are stated above the first system of the movement.

5. Copyright notice should only be on the title page and first page of the work. Anywhere else and it catches the conductor's eye as a possible instruction.

6. Page numbers at the top of the page, not the bottom. Also, page numbering should be continuous.

Thanks, Adrian! Your compliments are much appreciated. I took your advice on the score, and it definitely looks a lot better now (updated version above). The only advice I didn't pursue yet was looking for E#, B# and any double-sharps -- I think I'm going to need a long break from this piece before I dive into that.

Thanks again for taking the time to listen and go through the score!

1. Born a Flower:

It sounds like 3/4 to me. And even if that’s you intended somewhere, they aren’t the same time signature. Either change it, or use independent time signatures when they’re not hemiola.
I have a problem with this G half diminished chord going to C# minor thing. It really doesn’t sound smooth, especially when your melody jumps down so far to recapitulate. 
Strings at B have an awful bowing. Split it by half measure at least.
You use the same kind of transition a little bit too many times to transition into different sections. It feels like a cheap shortcut rather than a transition after a little bit.
m. 51 violin 1 jump down is too big to sound good. 
m. 63, you want to do a V/V chord to B major (or a VI chord which is also cool), then to E, but the way your have it written is B with a major seventh passing tone to B again which sounds really awkward.
The last chord only has one third on an understaffed instrument in the low register. It might as well not exist. 

II. Thumbelina’s Home
The hemiolas thrown in here are nice, but might be better off using tied notation rather than dotted notation.
Watch out for your bassoon range in the second section… also it’s better to have your flurries separated by triplet, not slurred through the entire thing.
The polyphony at C is really awkward. This is mostly due to the contrary motion. Sometimes it lines up in the octave and holds there which is a big scoring no-no in contrary motion.
Harp “rolls” at m. 99 can’t be like that. They’re so fast you might as well just have another actual roll.
Why you didn’t go into 3/2 in the whole C section is a little confusing, since it’s pretty clear that’s what it’s trying to be.
Section at E was very charming!
Harp at 161…you can’t be serious, right?
H needs more voices. Not instrumentally speaking but harmonically speaking. it sounds weak because it doesn’t have the correct support.
The tremolo section after that also looks better in 3/2.
More definition to all the downbeats. It sounds so unenergetic the way it’s written now. Listen to the second movement of Symphony Fantastique and you’ll know what I mean.

III. Captured by the Toads
Is there a reason you chose C# instead of D-flat? 
colossale? It doesn’t sound like it. More timpani, or anything to really define your beat. Even timpani on the offbeats would be better.
Make sure your grace note are slurred into your notes.
I think it’d be cool to have a chromatic descending high string tremolo line to compliment the flute, but that’s up to you. More glock there would be nice to.
This movement was good. I just think you need to use your beats when necessary. It sounds little bit dead for the energy it’s trying to portray.

IV. Wedding Arrangements
Again with the slurring of grace notes. 
Pizz section could use some offbeats.
I love this movement! It’s so great, but needs more impact. I’m seeing this is recurring theme with your work. More percussion! Fifths in strings! I thought a snare drum would be really cute in this movement. It’s probably my favorite movement in this whole thing (I type this etrospectively) but I really needed to feel more in the louder parts. The beginning was almost perfect!

V. In the Company of Beetles
Ending on the 3rd in the low melody is really awkward sounding.
All of these defined cadence points are really distracting and don’t sound fluid in the slightest. The problem with this is that it’s hard to really hear a purpose to the sound when you prevent the listener from hearing an arc every 8-10 measures.
Double flats are really unnecessary in all of those wind parts at the beginning of the movement. A lot of uneven writing when it comes to the Klangfarbenmelodie too. I’d suggest you make it a bit more uniform. 
When doing syncopations it might be better to use eighth notes or tied rhythms, because it’s confusing looking at it the way it is.
I really didn’t like this movement. It has weak harmonic movement in the bass with attempts at callbacks that really don’t go anywhere. 

VI. The Wintry Forest 
Same comments about slurring grace notes. 
Use of courtesy accidentals/naturals would be killer here.
The use of half notes and two eighth notes at the main melody regarding A and B in the 6/8 rhythm may sound right but is technically wrong. It needs to be a dotted quarter slurred to an eighth. I would also do this in the parts that have a similar rhythm in the harmony, just to be consistent. 
The spacing of the last chord is really awkward. 
Harmonically it was really interesting and cool until the glockenspiel came in at the end. Clashing tones and all that.
Engraving is noticeably worse in this movement. 

VII. Mr. Fieldmouse, Mr. Mole
Don’t rely on your harp too much for this opening section. Your strings are perfectly capable of doing this too. I get it; it’s supposed to sound earthy and rugged and all that, but strings are good at that. It’s all about the bending of chords. Symphony Fantastique, 3rd movement.
m. 11 should be an F#, not a G-flat.
m. 15, don’t end on the 9th. 
m. 18, C natural, not B#.
m. 24, awkward.
m. 36, also awkward. I don’t know the intention of a cadence point or a switch point… low melodies can be hard to balance out but you need to do it here better.
m. 56 you should also probably have the breath marks by triplet.
Section at D was cute!
Is the end supposed to be attacca? If it ends on the half, you need to lead into it better in the orchestration in the previous measures. A growth then an unexpected drop is an easy way to achieve this, but there are others.

VIII. On the Wings of a Swallow
Having the bass tones in the melody with everything else on top makes the whole thing not energetic because it loses the crucial chord tones to define everything. It doesn’t sound like the wind, even though I think that’s what you were going for. 
The slow section was too soon. 
C: slur grace notes
Whole section at C is really lackluster. It goes on for a while and doesn’t really pay off, in terms of the goal of the process. Those two things need to connect better. 

IX. Thumbelina Meets the Prince
The awkward phrase lengths makes this one a little harder to follow.  
The end of that buildup is so disappointing! It needs more voices to stabilize itself. I know that means that less people are playing less parts, but if everyone does it, it equals itself out after enough orchestration.
m. 37 why do 8va for bassoon…?

X. The Fairy Wedding
Don’t have a 9th appoggiatura when the tonic already exists in a similar voice at A.
Same at m. 13.
Harp at B… rolls are fine. You can even define it as rhythmic, but it just looks sloppy the way it is now.
Slurs in the strings at C are really bad.E could use a transition instead of a full stop.
The end sound weak, but I’m sure that’s just the MIDI file.

I just need more. Reduced orchestra is hard, especially since you’re trying to be so cinematic. That’s a juxtaposition of style that you can’t recover from easily in your instrumentation. Take it slow and really look at what your parts could be doing to support rather than project. The projection naturally comes with good support.

Good luck!

Hey Noah, I'm probably going to take the movements one or two at time over the next few days to give them the attention I think they warrant. Here's the first one:

I. Born to a Flower

The big question of the movement for me is which portions are in 6/8 and 3/4. I'm hearing things differently from @Monarcheon here, in that I do sense some sections as being in 6/8. The beautiful thing about the way you've set up your materials is that you can create rhythmic tension with hemiola in either meter. Why not take advantage of it and be more explicit about which sections are primarily in 6/8 or 3/4?

The harp arpeggios seem cliched to me when used as transitional material. Hollywood's drawn from that well too many times for it to seem original. That said, I do like that you staged the harp arpeggios in your opening material. It is a nice unifying element.

The chord progression leading up to rehearsal A sounds awkward to me. Despite what the spellings intend, I'm hearing the two bars before A as G half diminished 7 to G augmented before landing on E major. The harmonic relationship across the barline at A feels really muddy to me as a result. That said, it's a tough fix since you use that #2 scale degree thematically elsewhere, so abandoning the F-double-sharp isn't really an option. A couple of things I've played around with to replace the augmented chord before A: a B7#5 (spelled as B-D#-Fx-A) and a Fr+6 on D# (spelled A-D#-C#-Fx). Neither is perfect, but hopefully they can help you shake loose some ideas.

Also, at that same point, where does the flute solo actually start? You've got a solo mark on the barline at A, but you have a mezzo-piano before A that makes me think the F-double-sharp is actually part of the new melody here. The glock part also suggests that the solo starts before A. If so, mark Flute 1 solo before A with the dynamic you want. It's a notation convention in such cases that you can put the dynamic and "solo" marking above the staff to show it's for first flute in the score.

At B, bowing every half bar would really clarify the 6/8 nature of what's happening and set off the 3/4 nature of the line more clearly. It's still pianissimo in the strings there, so I don't think you'll be sacrificing the gossamer-like quality you're looking for.

Structurally, the last section (C-end) doesn't feel long enough for the gravity it brings to the movement. The music does a great job building up tension, but rushes the resolution. I really want to hear a nice, long tonic chord before the "button" chords in m. 66 and 67.

Also, in the build-up of this section, why not mirror the dynamic shape you wrote for the timps elsewhere in the orchestra? The ever larger swell idea seems like a much more expressive way to build things up than the linear crescendo you have in the strings.

Finally, a few of quick orchestration things near the end here:

1. From C on, the rolls you wrote would be re-attacked every beat. If that's what you want, then you're good. If you want unbroken rolls, they would be written as dotted halves tied together to get the full 2-bar duration.

2. I'd write the horn echo starting m. 61 for 1 only. Pairs of identical brass and woodwind instruments (e.g. two oboes or two horns)  don't tune well when playing together. Three or more in unison work better, with a "consensus pitch" emerging from the combination of the sounds.

3. Regarding Monarcheon's comment about the voicing of the last chord, doubling the Viola G# in Horn 2 might just help it be more present.

I don't have any critical capacity available to me right now as I am both exhausted and not good at orchestra-related anythings. Besides you've got plenty of advice already so I'm just going to give you the ole "slap on the back" for a job well done. I have to hand it to you, 25 minutes is a long long time! I'm rarely able to break 5 minutes without meandering and monotonous repetition. This is really an accomplishment and it sounds quite nice. I'll look forward to hearing it again once you've improved upon it!

@Adrian Quince and @Monarcheon : You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for spending your free time to help me out with this; I really do appreciate it. After years of dabbling at computer screens, I feel like maybe, just maybe, I will have a chance to have this piece performed by a respectable orchestra someday. If that were to happen, it'd likely be because you took the time to help me eliminate weak points, strengthen the material, and polish things up. And even if that never happens, your help is still very meaningful to me. Thank you to both of you. I am working on your revisions as I type this out. :)

@KJthesleepdeprived : Thank you! It's nice to get a slap on the back sometimes. I think I know how you feel about length -- I've always been self-conscious about how long my pieces are. It's almost as if there's a voice in the back of my mind saying, 'Why would anyone want to listen to your music for this long?' Full disclosure: I started working on this piece in the fall of 2015, just about a year and a half ago. Granted, only the second movement (of the current piece) survived my endless self-editing, and even that one ended up unrecognizable, but I do feel like I learned a lot just by chipping away at it day after day. And of course, the comments above prove that I have much, much more to learn, lol.

@Noah Brode, I hope you know that you've got a lot of good stuff here already! I wouldn't be taking the time to learn the piece and give you detailed feedback otherwise.

Anyway, here goes for the second movement:

II. Thumbelina's Home

My biggest observation about the movement is that the ends of sections generally feel a little abrupt to me. You might consider extending the final chords of some sections so they dovetail with the pickups to the next section. With a little more flow between sections this movement would come together nicely.

The next biggest observation is the handling of chromatic spellings. Reading some lines as a performer, it's not clear to me what the tendencies towards resolution are for some of the chromatic alterations. For example, in m. 5, aurally that is very obviously a leading tone to A, but the spelling of Ab obscures that. G# would make that clearer. The B-flats following I would argue are A-sharps since they have a pull to B. (That said, I don't see a problem leaving the Bb for the harp since that makes the vertical sonority clearer for them.)

Regarding the triplet flurries at B, I can't say I agree with slurring them by triplet. That would make sense for the strings, but in the woodwinds would break the line up more than I think you want there.

Also, in these flurries, be aware that the notes below G4 on the Oboe are heavy and reedy. Synth patches don't illustrate that well.

Given the range of the Bassoon from rehearsal letters B to C, it should be in tenor clef, not treble clef.

At C, you might want to think about bringing the Oboe down an octave. You'll get a richer, reedier sound that may suit your con amore mark better.

Great use of the Horn at m. 99! I wish I had a horn with me here to play that line.

That said, a live horn player will probably produce more of a hemiola effect that you might want here. I can see leaving the preceding portion of C in 3/4, but I really do think m. 99 to rehearsal D would be better set in 3/2. The same comment applies to the Cello solo after rehearsal D.

You have a balance problem at H. Putting all your brass on the top voice is going to obscure the bottom voice. You might save your lower horns (2/4) to reinforce that nice active bit in the lower voice in m. 211-214. They can continue to reinforce Cello an octave up until they go unison with the cello on the D in m. 219.

At rehearsal J, it's not clear what sort of sound you're looking for out of the trumpets. If it's a big statement, I'd probably put them in octaves for the first two bars so that the first player had solid reinforcement on the high B. The fifths weren't working for me. If it's more subdued, I'd go one only. Either way, just be aware that a trumpet above the staff will project more than the synth brass would make it seem.

III. Captured by the Toads

The big question in this movement: C# or Db? After going the score and looking at the harmonies bar-by-bar, I think C# is right for this. Between the use of the A-natural for as a b6 and the movement to B major in the middle of the piece, the spelling would get more awkward for the concert pitch instruments in Db.

Now, with that said... If you're going to put your brass in flat keys (pretty much a must with the horns here since they'd otherwise be in G# major), you need to go through and spell their notes in the flat keys. It looks like your software is retaining the sharp key spellings. Also, I'm not sure the C Trumpets really need to be in Db. The line is slow-moving enough that a good trumpet player will read it just fine.

Which brings me to a general comment... unless you really want the darker, broader sound of a Bb Trumpet, I would write for C Trumpet exclusively for orchestras. In the US at least, many orchestral players will use C Trumpets in place of Bb anyway. It's not right, of course, but something to be aware of.

The next big thing I see here is how you're spelling the whole tone scales. Our notation system terrible for whole tone scales, by the way, so it's not just you. At some point in any whole tone line that runs long enough, there's going to be a diminished third (C# to Eb, for example) when you switch from sharps to flats. The trick is placing it in the least worst spot.

In the opening measure, the spelling of the Clarinet line is problematic. The diminished third is turned into an augmented sixth on the downward leap from A# to C. I think it would be much clearer for the Clarinet to start Ab, Bb, C so that the downward leap is a minor seventh. I would also then add courtesy sharps to the F# and G# ending the first figure so there's no ambiguity about the scale here. (I would personally change the violin to match, so the violin would start F-G-A and have a courtesy E#.)

Likewise, a few bars later, the C-A#-C in the Clarinet would read far more easily as C-Bb-C.

For the whole tone scales in the horns, I would use Ab-Bb-C-D-E-F# as the spelling for the scale. While Gb is a closer note in Ab Major, F#-Ab is an easily recognized diminished third.

One other spelling thing, there are a few spots where you have D-D#-D-C# that I think would read better as D-Eb-D-C#.

For the colossale, break your brass choir apart and use them to give weight to a lot of the chord. Right now, that unison is going to overwhelm the chord in the winds and strings and undermine the effect that you're looking for. Also, this would be a really good spot to bring the timps in on the timekeeping action to free the Cellos and Basses to add weight to the climax chord.

Finally, after you do such a good job playing 2 against 3 and 3 against 2 in the first couple of movements, the straight ahead waltz meter of this movement kind of disappoints. A little more rhythmic variety would add some nice dimension to the movement and help unify it with what came before.

IV. Wedding Arrangements

This movement is so charming!

Only a few comments on this one:

1. I would seek out the advice of a good orchestral clarinetist (is there one lurking around here?) on how you're using Bb and A clarinets in the score. In isolation, I'd say that this movement would sit better on a Bb, but there's also the consideration of how much time is needed to switch and get comfortable on the new instrument.

2. The written C below the treble clef in m. 5 is below the range of the clarinet. All soprano clarinets (A-Bb-Eb) only go as low as written E below the treble clef.

3. In the Flute in m. 23, I would slur only the triplet 16ths. That will make the rhythm pop more, which seems to be what you're going for. Same thing horns m. 31.

4. See my comment above about the staccatissimos.