My first orchestral piece, a march.

I finished composing my march. It's for a challenge by a group on Musescore. And it's the first finished piece I've ever composed for an orchestra. I'm actually surprised that 120 bars of solo piano works and 360 bars of a full orchestra take roughly the same amount of time for me to compose. I mean, you would think that the solo would take a drastically shorter amount of time than the orchestra. But evidently not. I think I will reach full symphony capabilities by next year. The challenge was that the piece had to be based on Iwo Jima. That's the reason the first phrase of the US National Anthem is in my piece, augmented so that it fits into 2/4.

The G minor section represents an intense march. Then both the Bb major section and the G major section later on are the US National Anthem written as a trumpet fanfare. When it goes to F# minor, I have a solemn canon that appears 3 times. Then the C minor brings everything to a tense climax before the D major is reached and it transitions back to the G minor march theme. As you can see, I went a bit Beethovenian with the coda(that final fortissimo).

Pieces of inspiration for this work:

Mars, Gustav Holst(intense march feel, lots of brass):

Piano Quartet in G minor, Brahms(Rondo form, lots of diversity from the smallest solo to the biggest tutti):

Here's the march if you want to give me some feedback on it(I did try to treat it symphonically, thus the development of motives from both themes and the form boiling down to Sonata-Rondo form):

EDIT:

I only had half the piece in the MP3 and PDF when I originally posted this. I thought I had the whole piece but evidently not. Well here is the full piece

Not bad for your first piece for orchestra!  The Musescore soundfonts leave plenty to be desired, but as I recently found out there are plenty of free soundfont downloads available on the Musescore website including Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra with slightly better sounds.  I am not an expert on that by any means since I just recently downloaded it myself though.  Now to the music:  I am an advocate of meter changes so I wouldn't have minded, even in the middle of a march, if you had changed to 3/2 during the national anthem.  I think if it makes the composers intentions clearer meter changes are a must.  I don't think you copied neither the Holst nor the Brahms.  I actually thought it was more similar to Dvorak New World Symphony.  Thanks for the music!

Private message (or reply to me) with the musicxml file for this piece and I will plug it into noteperformer so you can have better sounds!

14 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

Not bad for your first piece for orchestra!  The Musescore soundfonts leave plenty to be desired, but as I recently found out there are plenty of free soundfont downloads available on the Musescore website including Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra with slightly better sounds.  I am not an expert on that by any means since I just recently downloaded it myself though.  Now to the music:  I am an advocate of meter changes so I wouldn't have minded, even in the middle of a march, if you had changed to 3/2 during the national anthem.  I think if it makes the composers intentions clearer meter changes are a must.  I don't think you copied neither the Holst nor the Brahms.  I actually thought it was more similar to Dvorak New World Symphony.  Thanks for the music!

 

Well, I found that when I augmented the note values to twice as long as in the original national anthem, it fit very nicely into the 2/4 bars, so I didn't bother changing the time signature. And yeah, I studied orchestration for about 3 years before actually writing my own compositions for orchestra. And I just noticed some similarities to the Holst and the Brahms as I was composing it. Similarities to the Holst that I noticed include: intense march, tympani on a lot of the beats, and full brass section use from the horn and trombone chords to the tuba bass line to the trumpet melody. Similarities to the Brahms I noticed were more formal and textural than anything else, Rondo, diversity of texture from the smallest(just tympani, cellos, and double basses) to the largest(the entire orchestra). Now that I am listening to Dvorak's New World Symphony, I notice some similarities there too, the creschendos starting textural and then adding dynamic creschendo to it for instance and the inclusion of more woodwind dominant sections.

And @Eickso, it won't let me attach either the .musicxml(which is I assume what you want me to send) or the .mxl(compressed), so how am I supposed to send it to you? I don't see a regular .xml option in the export options with Musescore, software or site.

Darn it, I just realized I only have half the piece in the MP3 and PDF. Let me change that.

7 hours ago, caters said:

And @Eickso, it won't let me attach either the .musicxml(which is I assume what you want me to send) or the .mxl(compressed), so how am I supposed to send it to you? I don't see a regular .xml option in the export options with Musescore, software or site

Just send me a dropbox/google drive link of the xml.

I like it! very 1800s tonal, I like the use of some reminnean transformations, beethoven liked those too. Might be a little heavy on the bass drum. Overall, a good piece and a great first step

Quote

Well, I found that when I augmented the note values to twice as long as in the original national anthem, it fit very nicely into the 2/4 bars, so I didn't bother changing the time signature.

No, of course you don't have to change it.  I don't know why I worded my advice so strongly.

Quote

And I just noticed some similarities to the Holst and the Brahms as I was composing it. Similarities to the Holst that I noticed include: intense march, tympani on a lot of the beats, and full brass section use from the horn and trombone chords to the tuba bass line to the trumpet melody. Similarities to the Brahms I noticed were more formal and textural than anything else, Rondo, diversity of texture from the smallest(just tympani, cellos, and double basses) to the largest(the entire orchestra). Now that I am listening to Dvorak's New World Symphony, I notice some similarities there too, the creschendos starting textural and then adding dynamic creschendo to it for instance and the inclusion of more woodwind dominant sections.

That's great that you see those similarities but there's no telling how other people will perceive your work when they hear it.  They might not hear that at all.  You can of course present your music to the listener with any warnings that you choose but I personally leave such comments to the listener.

1 hour ago, Left Unexplained said:

I like it! very 1800s tonal, I like the use of some reminnean transformations, beethoven liked those too. Might be a little heavy on the bass drum. Overall, a good piece and a great first step

 

Is the tritone axis one of those said transformations? Because that does occur in my piece. In fact, here are all the modulations and other major tonal motions that occur:

I dont think they count but I use them a lot, I just meant like switching from minor to major

@caters @Eickso

Too late, I already did it. I found the XML on musescore.org

Here is a Mp3

March_of_Iwo_Jima.mp3

deleted

I definitely hear Star Spangled Banner at the beginning. 

1 hour ago, pequadcob2009 said:

I definitely hear Star Spangled Banner at the beginning. 

 

That trumpet fanfare you mean? Yeah, that was on purpose, both to contrast the building up and tense G minor with a more triumphant mood and as a reference to the American victory at the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Just now, caters said:

That trumpet fanfare you mean? Yeah, that was on purpose, both to contrast the building up and tense G minor with a more triumphant mood and as a reference to the American victory at the Battle of Iwo Jima.

 

If it was intentional that makes sense, otherwise I was surprised to hear it.

I really liked this piece! I don’t really have enough experience to offer advice but I really enjoyed it. Keep up the good work!

@Rileyt Thanks. I've been receiving so much positive feedback on this piece. I've been studying orchestration for 3 years now, but it wasn't until this year that I could finish an orchestral piece. Last year I could start one, but I couldn't finish it. And yet, that's the year that I had the most orchestral ideas including 2 symphony ideas(nothing extremely detailed, mainly form and texture for each movement and number of movements). Maybe those ideas will come to fruition starting this year or next year.

I liked it a lot 🙂

This is a solid first orchestral piece. It is very well organized, and you develop your motives quite well. Nice job! Disclaimer: I listened to the mp3 @i(don't)suckatcomposing provided so I'm basing my comments off this recording.

A few things I noticed on a couple of listen-throughs:

• If I look at the timpani in m.83-113, it uses the notes D3, E3, G2, A2, and C3, without any opportunity to retune. I don't think this could work with a typical four-drum set, and I'm not sure it's even possible with a five drum set (timpani drum pitch ranges below). You could tune I to G2, II to A2, III to C3, and IV to D3, but I don't think you could get V down to E3. I'm no percussionist, so you might try to find one and ask. A lot of orchestras may have more than one set of timpani, but some will not.

• At m.230 and m.237 you have the first horn coming in on high A and high B respectively. While these are certainly possible, and most decent players could make it happen, I don't know there's any reason for them since the first Trumpet is on the same note and will drown it out anyway. You might consider bringing this note into a more comfortable range.
• At m.355 I noticed you have the trumpets voiced underneath the horns, was there any particular reason for this? Having the trumpets voiced over the horns would sound more natural.

Thanks for sharing!

50 minutes ago, gmm said:

At m.230 and m.237 you have the first horn coming in on high A and high B respectively. While these are certainly possible, and most decent players could make it happen, I don't know there's any reason for them since the first Trumpet is on the same note and will drown it out anyway. You might consider bringing this note into a more comfortable range.

Well, if you look at what's going on within the horn chords themselves(and note, this picture is at concert pitch), you see this:

Generally pretty good spacing amongst the horns, sixth between Horns I and II and seventh between Horns III and IV. And I treat the horns more like an SATB chorale when I use them for harmony purposes as is the case here and in a lot of other places, where the lowest and highest note may very well be 1.5 to 2 octaves apart, but the 2 middle voices are close. Moving that D down to say B natural I was concerned would make things too crammed in there(intervals would be Tritone, Minor Third, Augmented Second in ascending order. And while I could have moved the trumpets up higher, I thought that it would be better if they were at the same pitch as the horns than if they were at a higher pitch, since higher pitch requires more air and more air tends to make forte sound even more intense, like it is fortissimo instead of just forte. Given that the chords were already fortissimo and diminished and instrumentally dense, I didn't really need more intensity by having the trumpets even higher.

1 hour ago, gmm said:

At m.355 I noticed you have the trumpets voiced underneath the horns, was there any particular reason for this? Having the trumpets voiced over the horns would sound more natural.

So you're suggesting that instead of a concert pitch B and D towards the trumpet's low register, I should have say a concert pitch G and B a sixth higher and just raise the trumpets by a sixth for those final chords? I honestly didn't really have a particular reason for having the trumpets underneath the horns in the final cadence that gets repeated in quite a Beethovenian fashion. I was just trying to make sure that the chords were spaced close to the harmonic series both in each of the sections by themselves(woodwinds, strings, brass) and as 1 massive chord and I know that the trumpet is like the oboe in that while the total playable range is extensive, the range that's ideal for solos, harmony etc. is narrow in comparison in most circumstances.

1 hour ago, gmm said:

This is a solid first orchestral piece. It is very well organized, and you develop your motives quite well. Nice job!

Thanks. I wasn't exactly aiming for it to be in Sonata-Rondo form, it just happened to be in that form as I was writing it. What was more important to me as I was writing it was the emotional arc from the intensity and uncertainty of the battles(G minor) to what seems victorious but isn't really(Bb major) to a more solemn character as soldiers die(F# minor) to the further intensity as the battles continue(C minor leading back into G minor via the climax to a D major chord) to ultimate victory and triumph(G major). And it just so happens that I was able to use just 1 phrase and one short motive(that upward melodic motive in the G minor) combined with textural and dynamic creschendo and subito piano to achieve such an arc and that the arc naturally led it towards Sonata and Sonata Rondo forms. In other words, the form was unconsciously taking shape as I paid attention to the motives, dynamics, and instrumentation.

Hi this is a great work, but I have some observations.

The hymn is beautifully harmonized, however, I don't think it's the best that. is the part I like more. The thing is that the resto of the piece has an almost omnipresent rhythm multiplied by many instruments. 

I wish there would be more moments like this with countermelodies:

4 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

Hi this is a great work, but I have some observations.

The hymn is beautifully harmonized, however, I don't think it's the best that. is the part I like more. The thing is that the resto of the piece has an almost omnipresent rhythm multiplied by many instruments. 

I wish there would be more moments like this with countermelodies:

 

 

The canon that I developed from the first phrase of the US national anthem that is the Second Theme material, yes I've got some good counterpoint going on there. The almost omnipresent rhythm of quarter, eighth, eighth in the bass and eighth, eighth, quarter in the melody and the Beethovenian sound of the repeated diminished chords and repeated cadences all has to do with 1) the piece being specifically a march and not a symphonic movement that's written Alla Marcia and 2) the emotional arc of intense battles leading to victory and triumph. But I knew that I couldn't keep the intensity going forever, and so I didn't emphasize the rhythm, melodically or dynamically, in the F# minor section, at least for the most part. And the major key sections also have less emphasis on the rhythm until the final cadences than the G minor and C minor do.