Sketch of a Saxophone Quartet

I have just recently gotten into writing Classical music and this is the first piece I've ever written. I'd like to get some general feedback of what I should look into and how to improve. Please bear with me as those are the built-in soundfonts and aren't the most amazing sounding things in the world.

Quite nice for your first composed piece ever.

• I like how you include some imitation between the different saxophones.
• Like ilv said, you have an interesting theme that can be developed in various ways.

Some feedback:

• As a musician I like to have some indications how to interpret the music. For instance, I would personally prefer to have Allegro maestoso (100bpm) than only the tempo marking. However, this is just my opinion.
• I know this is a sketch, but please add articulation markings in your final result! It will help the performers to understand the music.
• There are some issues with fingering positions, which could be very akward to play:
  • M.11. Soprano. You should change the passage from written low C# to the other low C#, because the notes of this transition (C# - B - D# - C#) all have to be done with another pinky position.
• The last point is that you have to consider if you want to let the soprano play the high F# in mm.15 - 17., because the upper notes of the soprano saxophone can be very sharp.

Well done and I hope that you find the feedback useful!

Thank you both. I will be incorporating your suggestions. I am having an issue though with extending the piece. I'm not really sure of how to get past this point. I've about 5 sketches for different pieces now, but I have no idea on how I could go about extending them. Should I just repeat with variations? Once I get it going again it wont be difficult to keep it going I am just unsure of how to continue past the end point I made in the sketches. I'd really appreciate some tips. 

2 hours ago, GrimPanda said:

Thank you both. I will be incorporating your suggestions. I am having an issue though with extending the piece. I'm not really sure of how to get past this point. I've about 5 sketches for different pieces now, but I have no idea on how I could go about extending them. Should I just repeat with variations? Once I get it going again it wont be difficult to keep it going I am just unsure of how to continue past the end point I made in the sketches. I'd really appreciate some tips. 

 

Normally, I "directly" compose the music without any sketching. However, I do think about the form and the atmosphere I want to write for.

For a composition competition, I had to send in a sketch of max. 1 minute. After I had heard that I was selected, I could write a piece of 5 minutes. You have good material, but it looks like you only have one theme and no contrasting themes. Maybe you can use your other sketches for new contrasting melodies / material.

What I did with my sketch was that I just developed the material that I exposed in the sketch. So I used the sketch as my exposition and as my beginning for the final result.

Thus, you could go for literally continuing the music of the sketch and develop the exposed material. This is only one of the thousand options, but in general I think development is very important.