Music for Orchestra 8 (About 4'20")

It isn't exactly about Ukraine but its completion was inspired by a tragic picture of a wounded child being treated on a makeshift hospital bed, right leg fully bandaged.. The awareness of how widespread the situation was got at me. Until this point is was work 'on the back burner' but suddenly found its place in this setting. Fragmentary themes fell into place easily.

It isn't about the fighting or bombs being dropped but rather the desolation and despair but with a veiled hope things would soon get better..

It's not a particularly modern: chromatically tonal for most of it.

I'd be truly grateful for any comment good or bad, particularly about whether it's listenable at all. But feel free to criticise any aspect of it including the production. Above all, thank you if you can give it an audition. Edit: It needs to be played with the volume down a bit. 

Cheers.

The augmented second theme you used is effective in the sense that it never resolves, resembling never-ending qualities.

To me, the quality is more like eerieness, doubt and scare, instead of any from of tradegy or anger. I particularly like your addition of cymbal and vibraphone, which adds white noise to the piece, giving a sense of "I don't know what to expect". 
The muted strings are well-chosen in this theme. Nice touch.

Could be a nice music in cinametic settings.

I love this piece. It is "sensual", with a nice impressionistic atmosphere.

Are there 4 violin sections?

Nicely done. I recall reading something about (or maybe by) Paul Hindemith to the effect that he used consonant chords as momentary "points of repose" within a more unstable movement, and I hear a similar kind of thing here.

If you want a suggestion, I'd say eliminate the tremolo in the strings (that is, just bow normally) in bars 18 - 23. Also, production-wise, your horns are too far in the distance.

And it looks like the score doesn't quite match the audio version, so if you feel like posting a score update that may garner some more detailed comments.

Hi, I enjoyed the mood very much; I wonder if you incorporated some contrasting/conflicting musical lines against the main theme - would it enhance the feelings of conflict and dread?  At the moment the sparseness of the orchestration creates an image in my mind  of the"no man's land" - desolate wasted fields of world war 1.

Mark

On 4/24/2022 at 9:08 AM, HoYin Cheung said:

The augmented second theme you used is effective in the sense that it never resolves, resembling never-ending qualities.

To me, the quality is more like eerieness, doubt and scare, instead of any from of tradegy or anger. I particularly like your addition of cymbal and vibraphone, which adds white noise to the piece, giving a sense of "I don't know what to expect". 
The muted strings are well-chosen in this theme. Nice touch.

Could be a nice music in cinametic settings.

 

Many thanks for your comments and listening. Yes, I think 'eerie'. I once wandered around a derelict site for redevelopment, recalling the glassless black window openings, the furniture and so on strewn in the streets; a few rusting cars stripped of anything useful at the kerbs but no sign of humanity - before redevelopment actually started. In a war zone I think eerie and apprehension are about right. 

On 4/24/2022 at 9:50 AM, Luis Hernández said:

I love this piece. It is "sensual", with a nice impressionistic atmosphere.

Are there 4 violin sections?

Thank you for your kind comments and I'm glad it made sense.

As to the 4 violin parts - I found in a related piece that there was so much divisi to the strings I ended up dividing the string orchestra into 9 parts. Groups of sounds which I'm loathe to call clusters (because they aren't really) move up and down the compass of the music, entering at different moments made it easier if the divisions were on separate staves. 

I suppose it would be treated like any other divisi - alternate desks or each player on a desk would handle one or the other of the divisions. 

Again, thank you.

On 4/24/2022 at 5:38 PM, Tom Statler said:

Nicely done. I recall reading something about (or maybe by) Paul Hindemith to the effect that he used consonant chords as momentary "points of repose" within a more unstable movement, and I hear a similar kind of thing here.

If you want a suggestion, I'd say eliminate the tremolo in the strings (that is, just bow normally) in bars 18 - 23. Also, production-wise, your horns are too far in the distance.

And it looks like the score doesn't quite match the audio version, so if you feel like posting a score update that may garner some more detailed comments.

Many thanks for listening through and your generous comments. I'll give your suggestions a try (it'll just take a keyswitch change - then I can compare them. I can bring up the Horns a little. Balance is sometimes a problem with VSL: finding the right volume at the right timbre (velocity versus track fader).

As to the score, apologies about that and it's forced me to come up with a better system to keep score and daw in step. A detailed look did reveal at least a couple of discrepancies - I put up a slightly older score and will replace it this morning. (It happens because I allow a few weeks at least between semi-final draft and a final 'touch-up' ready for submission.

So, thank you for pointing that out.

On 4/24/2022 at 6:55 PM, MJFOBOE said:

Hi, I enjoyed the mood very much; I wonder if you incorporated some contrasting/conflicting musical lines against the main theme - would it enhance the feelings of conflict and dread?  At the moment the sparseness of the orchestration creates an image in my mind  of the"no man's land" - desolate wasted fields of world war 1.

Mark

 

(Decided to start a new reply here as my last post was getting a bit long. I'm sincerely grateful for all the comments as it seems that the work, with a few final alterations is at least listenable.

Thank you indeed for your comments and listening. Much appreciated. I had aimed for 'sparseness' in a kind of symbolic way although it gets stirred up a bit at times. So to that extent it's pleasing that you felt the mood.

But I take your point and am thinking about a new work that will be a little more varied in motifs and density. 

Again, many thanks.