Idyll (for wind quartet)

Hi, here my new piece for Wind quartet, a Kind of dreamy one. 

I appreciate your comments.

Where to begin! It is a fascinating work in my view that is as mysterious as it is idyllic. One thing that I continue to struggle with, Guillem, concerns your style - Every piece I hear sounds like it belongs to different era. This lovely quintet (you have 5 instruments here, not 4) sounds like it belongs to the early romantic era, with exception to bars 35-39 which is a nicely executed Monte, (in reference Robert Gjerdigen's terminology) that in this example is more characteristic of the baroque era.

When you post a work, I would recommend that you provide a more detailed description of your intentions, challenges and inspirations for that will help with feedback. Otherwise one appears to be posting purely for the appreciation of the community, not serious criticism.

I'd like to learn especially of your methodology and influences. I personally write in a style spanning between 1740-1780, which is pretty wide reaching considering the diversity that can be observed during those 40 years of music history. However, you appear to write across two centuries, posting entirely different genres of music from one week to the next. So, with greatest of respect, we need to learn a little more about it!

And thanks for sharing. The harmonies fit very nicely and contrary motion is excellent in places.

Hi Markus, thanks for your feedback. I will try to explain about my creation process. Initially I wrote the piece in CM, and later I transposed it to DbM, because the register was better, specially for the flute and oboe, so I will refer to the initial chord in CM, because it's much easier for me to explain (I hope it isn't much confusing when you look at the score).

I just started playing some chords in my piano, just a simple fifth chord progression Dm - GM - CM - FM - Dm - G#° - EM7 - Am. That's the first phase, endind with an inflection to the relative minor, and endind with Am, which is perfect to start with a similar chord progression. To that chords I added the 7th, and the 9th as a dissonance resolving always downwards to the octave as usual. I've tried to keep as notes as possible from one chord to the other, just to give it a sense of harmony moving smoothly so the voices move mostly by steps, therefore I have many pedal notes here and there. But I tried alo to give some movement here and there to create some movement and some interesting lines of quater notes to each part, because in that texture I wanted all instruments to have the same importance. It took me a while to get the desired result of the first phase well balanced. 

The second phase starts with the same harmony, but the flute line is ascending, in the oposite direction as the first, to add some variation and explore new harmonies. 

From bar 19 come a few bars with the same rythm in all voices and a couple of silences to make the music breath. 

Near the repetition bar there is a extension of the cadence with Dominant CM - DM7 - GM7 - CM. The repetition bar ends with a decepted cadences to Am, to link with the begining.

After the repetition, it links with the monte you mencioned also in a non regular resolution of the dominant 7 chord (GM7 - CM7) with and inflection to the subdominant close to the end.

One technic I used a lot is to introduce some solistic bars just before the final cadances, in this case flute and clarinet play a line one octave apart and then oboe and bassoon eco the line transpose to a forth. It's the idea of cadenza and can be applied to different music styles.

The final pedal is a plagal minor cadance Fm -CM.

Interestingly, the only authentic perfect cadence of the piece is just before the final tonic pedal on the bassoon. I think keeping the cadance to the end gives a bigger sense of expectation and a bigger sense of arrival when in comes, and the key are the non-regular resolutions of the dominant 7 chord, which are tipical of the romantic period, driven to it's extreme with Wagner's music. 

To the question of my source inspiration for this particular piece, I can not tell you. Sometimes I write under a influence of one particular piece or composer, but most of the times it's hard to say :)

I hope it helps to understand my process.

man, very peaceful.  my critique:

1) Meas. 44. Why unison?  Maybe harmony? peaceful counterpoint?  You don't want to lose the flow that you have. 

2) Maybe the ending can have all those suspensions that you have in the beginning.  That would be a great way to juxtapose your composition instead of the static.

3) Meas. 34 Although your midi recording is awesome; a low Db on oboe usually is not.  You MIGHT want to switch the clarinet with the oboe. Of course the oboe can do it. But I think what you are looking for might be better with that switch.

Score Preparation:

1) Put your NAME on your work. 

2) Should be a transposed score, especially for chamber music.

3)Needs a bracket: gives it a cleaner look

My 0.002.  Good piece.  Write 2 more movements. Have this one be the middle one

Hi, thanks for your comment, I will check the points you said. Replacing the oboe for the clatinet in the progression Meas. 34 is a good idea. 

Beautiful work.

I don’t see the problem mixing different styles or referente periodo, whenever it sounds good.

Thanks Luis!