Poll: Fall 2020 Competition Topics

Please vote for your favorite option for the Fall 2020 YC Competition 

I personally would go with any of them except for the orchestration option which is really more of an pedantic exercise than a creative one.

1 hour ago, bkho said:

I personally would go will any of them except for the orchestration option which is really more of an pedantic exercise than a creative one.

 

I had the same thought 🙂 but it was mentioned in the other recent thread by a few different people, so I thought I should include it.  A low-pressure orchestration challenge would be nice though, elsewhere on the site

Here are my thoughts on each option(I would go for most of them):

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All entrants compose a piece of absolute music in a specific form [sonata, rondo, mosaic, etc.] (form TBD)

That might be good, except that especially with some forms like Sonata and Rondo, there's an overlap, so if I ended up writing something like A B A Dev. A B Coda, and the objective was Rondo, would it fit as it is Sonata-Rondo, or would it not fit as it is more Sonata-like than Rondo-like? That alone might disqualify me as my "Rondo" is equally likely to stay Rondo as it is to expand out to Sonata-Rondo.

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All entrants compose a piece based on an ancient culture / myth of their choosing

I don't really know much about mythology or ancient music to really participate if this ends up being the option. I once tried to go for an Egyptian feel and just could not find enough Egyptian music out there to even have a chance at doing it.

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All entrants separately compose original pieces based on the same melody or fragment

This would align with my compositional style well, as I do tend towards the side of motivic development, especially in larger works(either by length or instrumental mass(so a 15 minute piano sonata vs a 5 minute orchestral piece, likely that both would involve motivic development at the core)). If it's a full melody though, I would do a Theme and Variations and it's likely other people would do the same too, so I would prefer a motivic fragment if we go with this one.

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All entrants orchestrate the same piece of piano music

I would argue that orchestrating a piano score is just as much compositional thinking as writing an original composition. That's certainly true for the few orchestral arrangements I have done(Pathetique Sonata(Piano -> Orchestra), Eine Kleine Nachtmusik(String Quartet -> Orchestra), Prelude in G minor by Rachmaninoff(Piano -> Orchestra)). There are cases in all of these where I had to diverge from the composer's intentions a little but still make it sound like the composer. In the Mozart example, I had to change the second harmony in the opening measures from D7 to C major as all C's would have been overdoubling to my eyes and ears and D7 would just sound gross with all the strings playing C's(emphasized chordal seventh in a fully written dominant seventh, no thanks, especially not in Mozart), but I kept the melodic D7 arpeggiation so that the C major wasn't too out of place. In the Beethoven example, I for one thing, had to expand the woodwind part of the orchestra past Beethoven's era and towards a modern orchestra, and for another thing, had to compromise the octave tremolos by just having the double basses play the lower note and the cellos play the upper note of said octaves repeatedly(eighth notes to be specific). In the Rachmaninoff example, there actually wasn't all that much I had to change other than the spacing of the harmonies.

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All entrants compose a piece based on the seasons (whether one specific season or multiple seasons)

This is the one I voted for as I have written season related pieces and am considering writing a suite portraying the seasons(Probably only 4 movements though instead of Vivaldi's 12 as it would probably not be in concerto form but rather something more like a Rondo or a Waltz, or even multiple of those shorter forms).

On 9/29/2020 at 9:10 PM, Noah Brode said:

Please vote for your favorite option for the Fall 2020 YC Competition 

 

When will the poll end?

@Ivan1791 Just before midnight on the night of Tuesday, October 6 (Eastern time)

4 minutes ago, Noah Brode said:

@Ivan1791 Just before midnight on the night of Tuesday, October 6 (Eastern time)

 

Okay.

If possible make more people vote so we get a more valuable poll.

Seems to be very close, the poll. If the top two are tied, maybe we can do another short round on these two options?

1 hour ago, zhenkang said:

If the top two are tied, maybe we can do another short round on these two options?

Or maybe we could also vote to see if there's any interest in combining the tied options together into one prompt?

1 hour ago, PaperComposer said:

Or maybe we could also vote to see if there's any interest in combining the tied options together into one prompt?

Not bad idea... Although choosing the melody or fragment can be another challenge itself.

3 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

Not bad idea... Although choosing the melody or fragment can be another challenge itself.

 

If that wins I propose to use this melody:

4 minutes ago, Ivan1791 said:

If that wins I propose to use this melody:

Why not this one?

4 minutes ago, Luis Hernández said:

Why not this one?

 

 

That could work too, but I think Schuman's melody is more melodious and easier for a theme and variations for example. Also it has that nice semitone tonal shift that reminds me of the one Beethoven uses in his 3rd symphony haha. 

On 10/2/2020 at 1:33 PM, Ivan1791 said:

If possible make more people vote so we get a more valuable poll.

I can't really do that, at least not without extending the poll. I'm not sure it's possible to edit the poll end time... And if it were, I'd be concerned about spending too much time on this planning part of the competition, and not enough time on the sign-ups and the actual composition portion. We're probably going to need to have a post-poll discussion on this topic anyway, and it would be great to be able to wrap up the whole competition before Christmas. In the meantime, I can send some messages in the chatbox to hopefully get more people to vote

1 minute ago, Noah Brode said:

I can't really do that, at least not without extending the poll. I'm not sure it's possible to edit the poll end time... And if it were, I'd be concerned about spending too much time on this planning part of the competition, and not enough time on the sign-ups and the actual composition portion. We're probably going to need to have a post-poll discussion on this topic anyway, and it would be great to be able to wrap up the whole competition before Christmas. In the meantime, I can send some messages in the chatbox to hopefully get more people to vote

 

Okay, I understand.

Honestly, haven't noticed that until you mentioned it on the main chat.

Was a tough choice between the second and the third,

I guess that the third one just calls for more variety. 

If we're going to do a melody/fragment after all I would personally prefer it to be an original one composed by someone either participating in or judging the competition.

The melodic fragment, ideally, would one that would be suitable to high tonal and ambiguously tonal composition. This would be to not limit the creative directions that one can take with it. There would also have to be some guidelines to how much it's adhered to or referenced.

Something like this

16 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

There would also have to be some guidelines to how much it's adhered to or referenced.

But this.... I don't understand why?

Doing a composition of the theme of the musical offering would be pretty awesome. Probably hard too.

1 hour ago, Ivan1791 said:

Doing a composition of the theme of the musical offering would be pretty awesome. Probably hard too.

 

Yes... a challenge,... 

If the third option (with the common melodic fragment) wins, I think potential entrants should message their ideas to the eventual judge(s) and the judge(s) should decide on a melody from the options that are provided to them. Doing another poll like this one would probably take a long time, particularly if there are a lot of ideas being thrown around

3 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

But this.... I don't understand why?

Imagine a submission just that quotes the melody once and that's it. Anyone can do that – that's easy; you're just writing your own piece at that point with no other limitations.

5 hours ago, Monarcheon said:

Imagine a submission just that quotes the melody once and that's it. Anyone can do that – that's easy; you're just writing your own piece at that point with no other limitations.

 

I understood it on the opposite say.... sorry.

5 hours ago, Monarcheon said:

Imagine a submission just that quotes the melody once and that's it. Anyone can do that – that's easy; you're just writing your own piece at that point with no other limitations.

 

As far as I understand, just saying that the piece is to be based on a melodic fragment is itself imposing a limitation as while you are free to harmonize as you see fit, the melody has to be variations on the fragment, ergo, you can't just use the melody once in it's original form and call it done.