Nine Snapshots of Composers in Hell

Score Video on Youtube

Hi!

For an english project at school, I was tasked with depicting Dante’s 9 circles of Hell in my own artistic way (the other option outside of writing music was to do arts and crafts...), and I chose to do something like 9 mini-movements about different composers I enjoy. It is not a typical approach to Hell in making everything chaotic, but more that each composer is stuck listening to their own style music for eternity. There are 9 short movements.

I have spent 5-6 hours these last three days writing this, and really enjoy a about half of these short compositions.
 

For a game, if you want to participate, write your guesses of which composer is which in the comments, writing 1-9 from the word bank below. I am interested to hear your guesses before checking the score!

Poulenc, Mussorgsky, Adams, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Holst, Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninov

Questions:

1. What are your top 3 mini-movements? Why?

2. Are the are that do/don’t sound like the listed composer? I think Debussy and Mussorgsky are not similar.

Thanks for listening, and have a good one!

woooooowwwww. so expressive and original. looove the moment at 1:18

Listening to Holst's "Mars" forever would certainly be hell for me! LoL  I hope your other movements aren't some obvious parody that I haven't figured out, of a famous piece by given composer.  I thought the Rachmaninoff parody was a bit unfair LoL - his music is usually much more beautiful/tuneful than that.  I guess I can compliment your unique voice coming through all of these parodies as I don't think I would be able to guess very accurately which movement belongs to which composer (besides Holst and Rachmaninoff probably).  I thought the kind of metric changes that you employ in the Prokofiev parody is much more characteristic of Bartok or something.  Overall quite enjoyable!

The chatroom tradeoff invitation brought me here 😁

Very nice and interesting concept with the mini movements!

I was too eager listening that I didn't read your caption about guessing composer.

Nice expression and articulation, on the pieces.

The ones I liked mostly were Holst, Ravel and Stravinsky. Although Stravinsky is already intimidating, this one twisted it a little further.
Debussy could be a little longer in my opinion. Try making it more evil by presenting more dissonant harmonies and sudden attacks.

What software instruments are you using? Some of the wind instruments sound great!

5 hours ago, Olov said:

The chatroom tradeoff invitation brought me here 😁

Very nice and interesting concept with the mini movements!

I was too eager listening that I didn't read your caption about guessing composer.

Nice expression and articulation, on the pieces.

The ones I liked mostly were Holst, Ravel and Stravinsky. Although Stravinsky is already intimidating, this one twisted it a little further.
Debussy could be a little longer in my opinion. Try making it more evil by presenting more dissonant harmonies and sudden attacks.

What software instruments are you using? Some of the wind instruments sound great!

 

Just responded to your last piece. 
 

Ah well I played the guessing game with my girlfriend when she came over and it was fun, so I thought to at least add it here.

Stravinsky, especially Rite of Spring (being one of my favorite pieces ever), are embedded into me and my writing. My style meshes from my love for Stravinsky, Adams, and Poulenc specifically, while trying to be as unique and cool in my own way.

i agree on the Debussy. I think that one is the lamest of the 9. I did spend very little time on that one, though.

I use Dorico + Noteperformer. If you want to send me your Mozart piece in .xml form, I will plug it into Noteperformer and send you the audio.

13 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

Listening to Holst's "Mars" forever would certainly be hell for me! LoL  I hope your other movements aren't some obvious parody that I haven't figured out, of a famous piece by given composer.  I thought the Rachmaninoff parody was a bit unfair LoL - his music is usually much more beautiful/tuneful than that.  I guess I can compliment your unique voice coming through all of these parodies as I don't think I would be able to guess very accurately which movement belongs to which composer (besides Holst and Rachmaninoff probably).  I thought the kind of metric changes that you employ in the Prokofiev parody is much more characteristic of Bartok or something.  Overall quite enjoyable!

 

Ha, I really like that I just made a ripoff Mars. Holst, Debussy, Rach, and Prokofiev were the composers I did not know how to replicate, so I thought it would be funny to make the Holst Hell sound like that.

I will list out what I was thinking of when writing for the different composers and where the inspiration came from.

debsuussy - no idea actually

Poulenc - His Sextet, and his clarinet sonata. I think the horn moment sounds like something from his sextet, and the woodwinds + string dissonance as well.

Rach - lmao I don’t know on this one. I just thought the clarinet/piano run sounded like his 2nd concerto a bit and the strings in that concerto have the melody so idk it was a lazy attempt.

Holst - literally just Mars

Mussorgsky - semi Pictures, but that and Bald Mountain are the only things I have heard from him

Adams - Chairman Dances, Lollapalooza, and just my own love for him

Prokofiev - I looked up one Children’s March before writing, and also I like his last movement of the 8th Piano Sonata, which is where the odd meters came from

Ravel - a lame version of the intro of Daphnis Suite 2

Stravinsky - the Rite, as well as my love for him

I listened to the Prokofiev Piano Sonata 8 3rd movement and it only seems to change meter between 4/4, 12/8 (which is still 4/4 only with triplets) and 3/4 and it only changes those meters at different sections of the piece, but in your Prokofiev parody you change the meter within a very short amount of time within a phrase which isn't characteristic of him imo.  The Poulenc Sextet changes meters more often but still not within phrases but in between them.

I think (if you weren't lazy as you say) you could expand on this and get stoked and really get as much out of your love of these composers as you can.  Or maybe you could repeat this experiment but with different pieces in mind for each composer?  Also - next time you should at least let each movement be long enough to develop a unique melodic phrase inspired by each composer instead of just a short stint like you have here.  Just some ideas.  🤔

6 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

I listened to the Prokofiev Piano Sonata 8 3rd movement and it only seems to change meter between 4/4, 12/8 (which is still 4/4 only with triplets) and 3/4 and it only changes those meters at different sections of the piece, but in your Prokofiev parody you change the meter within a very short amount of time within a phrase which isn't characteristic of him imo.  The Poulenc Sextet changes meters more often but still not within phrases but in between them.

I think (if you weren't lazy as you say) you could expand on this and get stoked and really get as much out of your love of these composers as you can.  Or maybe you could repeat this experiment but with different pieces in mind for each composer?  Also - next time you should at least let each movement be long enough to develop a unique melodic phrase inspired by each composer instead of just a short stint like you have here.  Just some ideas.  🤔

 

That experiment is kind of what my Suite of Minimalism is/has been. This was written in 6 hours for a high school english project, so it was more directed to getting me a good grade rather than being the next set in my composer’s folder. I guess I should not have used “lazy”. Maybe if I ever do another composer inspired piece for reals in the future! Thanks for your comments

10 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

I listened to the Prokofiev Piano Sonata 8 3rd movement and it only seems to change meter between 4/4, 12/8 (which is still 4/4 only with triplets) and 3/4 and it only changes those meters at different sections of the piece, but in your Prokofiev parody you change the meter within a very short amount of time within a phrase which isn't characteristic of him imo.  The Poulenc Sextet changes meters more often but still not within phrases but in between them.

I think (if you weren't lazy as you say) you could expand on this and get stoked and really get as much out of your love of these composers as you can.  Or maybe you could repeat this experiment but with different pieces in mind for each composer?  Also - next time you should at least let each movement be long enough to develop a unique melodic phrase inspired by each composer instead of just a short stint like you have here.  Just some ideas.  🤔

 

Just looked it up; I meant piano sonata 7 mvt 3 for Prokofiev, not 8 😜

These were quite charming, I must say. Hard to believe someone in high school wrote them (your sound library is certainly impressive—maybe that helps? Lol).

I enjoyed Poulenc, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky the best. Great use of dissonance and expansive chords. It's a pity these were only a minute or two each...

Thanks for sharing!