6 Dances for Wind Quintet

Six Dances for Wind Quintet

-Polka

-Minuet

-Valse Lente

-Siciliano

-Landler

-Tarantella

Overall, I like this set of dances.

The melodies are nice and there is a light atmosphere, which is needed for dances.
I think you have to work on counterpoint, because there are plenty places where the melody or harmony doesn't resolve well.
Take a look at Fux' Gradus ad Parnassum. I actually liked to read and study the book, because I indentified myself with the student Josephus, who is eager to learn everything about composition.

2 hours ago, Maarten Bauer said:

Overall, I like this set of dances.

The melodies are nice and there is a light atmosphere, which is needed for dances.
I think you have to work on counterpoint, because there are plenty places where the melody or harmony doesn't resolve well.
Take a look at Fux' Gradus ad Parnassum. I actually liked to read and study the book, because I indentified myself with the student Josephus, who is eager to learn everything about composition.

 

Agree with Maarten!

A really pleasant suite. I like how you used the individual instruments; should be fun to play in a real ensemble.  The siciliano is rather atypical - the "siciliano rhythm" could be more present if you want to write something more genre-specific, and the pulse could be slower. Regarding counterpoint: All in all you avoided many pitfalls, but as @Maarten Bauer said, your compositions will really benefit from an improved understanding of counterpoint.

For me (and probably others), the problem is often not the abstract knowledge of counterpoint, but its fluent application which only comes with lots and lots of practice. But it is really rewarding.

Because harmony and melody are things I really enjoy thinking about, here's a few things that occur to me on first listening.

The run in bar 12 could start on concert B rather than concert A, which would not only be more interesting harmonically but would lead more logically into the second beat (repeating the last note sounds a bit clunky). Alternatively the run could go A G F# D E instead of A G F# E E. Or A G A B A. Or A F# G F# E. The best part about composing is getting to play around with these things!

The voice leading into bar 16 sounds very unnatural. You might want to revoice the bar 16 chord or rethink the quaver leading into it. The horn in particular should probably finish on either the tonic or the 3rd of the chord.

The second beat of bar 23 could have two staccato quavers on the second beat instead of a crotchet. It works fine musically as it is but it would fit more into the dancey spirit of the piece as two quavers.

The C-F# tritone in bar 40 would work if not for the G in the bass. A D-D-G rather than G-D-G bassline might work better.

In bar 43 you've got an E flat in the bass and an E natural in the melody, which sounds quite out of place.Nothing intrinsically wrong with that but you've set up a certain tonal atmosphere already, and this is a sudden break of that. Bar 45 works fine except that again, it's a slightly unexpected break from the tonal nature so far. I've had a few lessons with my composition tutor here at RCS and this is one of the things he's told me - it's totally fine to break from your established tonality, but you have to kind of set it up or tease it a little first.

The flute in bar 46 should maybe have an E natural rather than an E flat. It's called the melodic minor scale for a reason - when you have an ascending melody, it sounds 'nicer' to go D - E natural - F# - G, and when you have a descending melody it sounds 'nicer' to go G - F - E flat - D. Having an E flat in one bar and an E natural in the next is totally fine here!

Bars 61 and 67, again, would sound more smooth without the repeated note in the melody. You can do whatever you like that sounds good to avoid it.

Bars 62-63 has a slightly weird chord progression with the Eb being repeated in the bass. I'm not sure what chord you're trying to portray in 62 - if it's an A flat chord, an A flat in the bass would help; if it's a B flat chord, a B flat would help; if it's an E flat chord, then maybe try a different chord.

The C flat in bar 81 feels unsupported. It would work nicely if you could find a spot for another C flat elsewhere in the bar. Or, you could make it a C natural and just have a normal F minor chord - I think that would actually be completely fine here and would still provide variation.

The 7th (Ab) in bar 99 really feels like it needs to resolve down to the G. It's just left hanging. You could resolve it directly to a G or maybe actually leave it out entirely and just have a plain B flat to E flat cadence which would also work just fine.

These were just on the first few dances, and I'd probably have more detail on some of them if YC let me choose a specific point within its playback (or if it can, someone needs to let me know how). I like that you're playing around with tonality and harmony, and you absolutely need to keep doing that. These are just a few things that really stuck out to me.
There are also probably going to be balance issues if you ever get it performed (one thing I learned from getting my own wind quintet performed is that the oboe really overpowers things...), for example the pp and ppp at bars 73 and 75 - the different instruments in the ensemble are going to handle pp and ppp quite differently, especially in their different registers that you've put them in. But you shouldn't worry about balance just yet.

Thanks @stewboy. This was really helpful to hear what I can work on with the melodies and harmonies.

I enjoyed the suite. Not easy 5 counterpoint lines.

However, I've read Fue and it's a nightmare.  I didn't find many thins that I could use in practice.

I studied counterpoint from other point of view, which retains the basic rules, of course, it was much better.

Kinda gave me a "Mozart" vibe for a few moments: probably since the instrumentation is quite similar to his Gran Partita 

The first thing that I notice in listening to this casually is that there's no separation between the different dances.  They seem to run into each other even though from what I can tell they're in different keys.  This is a crutch for many reasons.  It allows you to neglect bringing each dance to a satisfying conclusion and it prevents each dance from having it's own individual identity.  Also, the lack of space between the dances prevents the casual listener from knowing when one dance is finished and another begins.  Formally it would have really benefited this suite to have some space in between because as is, it detracts from the musicality and logic of it (also because there isn't really any transitions in between them).

As for the music, I think I like the character of the Tarantella the best.  Also, I personally tend to dislike slow movements and the Valse Lente dance sounds really languid to me.  The Landler is kinda nice though - I like the duet between the bassoon and horn.  Overall though it was quite enjoyable.  Thanks for sharing!

P.S.:  I also have a certain aptness towards writing dances, but so far the only kinds of dances I've written have been the standard ones from the good old Baroque dance suite.  I like the idea of writing a dance suite using a completely different set of dances and folk traditions like you've done here.

@PeterthePapercomPoser

Hi Peter,

First of all, I'm going to tentatively suggest that I'm not sure if you've realised this post is four years old?

Nonetheless, thank you very much for what is a great insight into the presentation of these dances. I had another listen to them for the first time in years(!) having sort of abandoned the piece, and I do remember enjoying writing slightly more unusual dances into a suite, my mission always was to do something a bit different with this piece. I think the lack of spaces was due to me not having the sense to put each of the movements in separate files and combining them later, as I do now, but I'm still not convinced about the endings. 

The Tarantella was always my favourite, but I think, at the end of the day, this suite could be described as having good ideas with some nice moments, but overall the execution leaves much to be desired! I would however like to write a sequel work, so could maybe add that to my list of projects!

Once again, thank you for your review!

aMC