Cantus - for string orchestra

Hi all!

I'm excited to show a new piece I was commissioned to write by a local youth orchestra: Cantus. It's not very long (5'30'') and mostly consists of a single motif tucked between melodic material and developed into a theme that is tweaked for the entire piece. As indicated by the title, I attempted to juxtapose choral style on top of string writing, which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected I would. All constructive feedback is very much appreciated.  

As I composed, I struggled a bit with two main challenges. Even though I enjoyed mixing my love of strings and choir (I'm a violist and sing baritone), it was difficult to balance these two very different styles. Additionally, extending a single motif both rhythmically and melodically for a decent period was more stretching than I thought it would be. Regardless of that, although it's no Beethoven 5 first movement, I'm quite proud of how the theme and piece overall turned out in this respect. But maybe that's just me. I'd love feedback on how well I met these challenges. Stylistic commentary is also very appreciated.

Additionally, I have just a couple of questions to prompt a bit of specific critique on a few things. Answer as many as you'd like!

1. What was your favorite part of the piece? Why?
2. What did you dislike most about the piece? 
3. How well was the motivic/thematic development executed?
4. Did you feel that the piece ended too long after the climax?
5. Do you have comments on compositional technique (i.e., harmony, orchestration, part-writing, etc.)?
6. Did anything in the piece feel out of place?
7. Any overall suggestions for improvement (in this piece and in my composing in general)?

I've attached the full score below; feel free to follow along. Since this was a commissioned piece, I am fortunate to have a live recording! I was commissioned by the Preucil School String Orchestra, and Cantus was performed on their recent tour in Europe. I have several different recordings from different halls, but I'm attaching my favorite. This particular recording was made in the Czech Museum of Music in Prague (incidentally, the most live space I've ever been in). I really loved how the live acoustics of the hall interacted with this piece and even enjoyed hearing it more in this room than in the other, more acoustically flexible spaces Cantus was performed in. Recordings are never really able to capture the beauty of a space, but maybe you'll be able to hear a bit of the lingering character of the hall.

I want to take just a moment to acknowledge the PSSO and its amazing conductor Carey Bostian for their fantastic interpretation and wonderful performances. It was an honor for me to work with them and a pleasure to watch as Cantus became not just an idea in my head but a real, living and breathing piece of music. I'd like to extend a huge thank you to them for being excellent musicians and amazing people.  

Finally, another huge thank you to you for taking the time to listen to my piece! I hope that you enjoy it and that it brings you peace. 

Well, what can I say ... what a beautifully-crafted work!  The texture/flow/give and take/voices exquisite.  Congrats on a wonderful work. 

Mark

9 hours ago, JWNewton said:

• What was your favorite part of the piece? Why?
• What did you dislike most about the piece? 
• How well was the motivic/thematic development executed?
• Did you feel that the piece ended too long after the climax?
• Do you have comments on compositional technique (i.e., harmony, orchestration, part-writing, etc.)?
• Did anything in the piece feel out of place?
• Any overall suggestions for improvement (in this piece and in my composing in general)?

The vocal quality of the string voices made this extremely "human" in texture/flavor. It lived and breathed, just like good music ought to do. I adored that.

But incidentally, that was also what I liked least about the piece. The strings were treated like human voices (albeit very good human voices). There probably isn't much you can do about that, seeing as this is an arrangement of a choral work, after all. And in the end, it's still a phenomenal piece of music.

I do not have any complaints about the work's development. To my ears, it flowed beautifully.

I felt the end was perfectly contrived, not forced or rushed in any way.

I do have some comments regarding your compositional techniques. Before I go on, though, here's a caveat: you clearly know how to write good music and the following comments are in no way written as a response to what you did wrong in this piece, merely suggestions of how you might improve your compositional skills.

• Your harmonic motion is heavily parallel, meaning that it rises and falls with the leading voice. This detracts from the independence of the other voices in the work and from the interesting-ness of the piece overall. Parallel motion does have its place in composition, of course. However, it should be interspersed with contrary or oblique motion to grant the piece more texture, particularly in works with such similar-sounding timbres. (As I look through the score more carefully, I can see there is less parallel movement than I first thought, but this is still good advice, so I'm keeping this comment here lol.)
• Perhaps relating to the above comment, I found that there wasn't much vocal independence here. The 1st violins take the melody the vast majority of the time, while the other voices seem to be there merely as harmonic support. Again, there is nothing objectively wrong with this, as what you have produced is quite beautiful. There is still, however, merit to giving equal credence (or striving for it) to all of the voices present in a work of music consisting of homogeneous instruments.
• You've provided a great many expressional instructions in this work, notably in the latter half of the piece. These are thoughtful additions to any piece of music intended to be performed by live musicians, but they can be overdone and a bit distracting. Bear in mind that some expressions are achieved by the simple sounding of an instrument's register (for example, notes played on the G string of a violin are going to sound poco pesante whether you provide the expression or not).

From a listener's perspective, nothing sounded/felt out of place. As a viewer (of the score) I was a little distracted by the footnotes explaining standard musical notation, such as the Roman numerals for the strings and the n for decrescendo al niente. I'm not sure if you really need those footnotes; they seem redundant. (But that could just be me.)

It's difficult to "judge" you based on just one piece of music, and a choral arrangement at that. This work was indeed beautiful (and congratulations on having it performed — that's awesome!), with lush and intimate harmonies that progressed organically throughout. There was a slight lack of vocal independence as previously stated, but I have no way of knowing if that's merely a side effect of the arrangement or something inherent to your style.

IN ANY CASE.... thank you so much for posting this! The score was clean and professionally rendered, and the piece itself is a very pleasant listen; I was quite moved by it.

Best,

Jörfi

5 hours ago, MJFOBOE said:

Well, what can I say ... what a beautifully-crafted work!  The texture/flow/give and take/voices exquisite.  Congrats on a wonderful work. 

Mark

 

Thank you! I'm so glad that you enjoyed it.

1 hour ago, Tónskáld said:

The vocal quality of the string voices made this extremely "human" in texture/flavor. It lived and breathed, just like good music ought to do. I adored that.

But incidentally, that was also what I liked least about the piece. The strings were treated like human voices (albeit very good human voices). There probably isn't much you can do about that, seeing as this is an arrangement of a choral work, after all. And in the end, it's still a phenomenal piece of music.

I do not have any complaints about the work's development. To my ears, it flowed beautifully.

I felt the end was perfectly contrived, not forced or rushed in any way.

Thank you!

I'm intrigued by your feelings about the choral style; that's an astute observation. I would love to hear more about why the style was both enjoyable and detracting.

2 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

I do have some comments regarding your compositional techniques. Before I go on, though, here's a caveat: you clearly know how to write good music and the following comments are in no way written as a response to what you did wrong in this piece, merely suggestions of how you might improve your compositional skills.

• Your harmonic motion is heavily parallel, meaning that it rises and falls with the leading voice. This detracts from the independence of the other voices in the work and from the interesting-ness of the piece overall. Parallel motion does have its place in composition, of course. However, it should be interspersed with contrary or oblique motion to grant the piece more texture, particularly in works with such similar-sounding timbres. (As I look through the score more carefully, I can see there is less parallel movement than I first thought, but this is still good advice, so I'm keeping this comment here lol.)
• Perhaps relating to the above comment, I found that there wasn't much vocal independence here. The 1st violins take the melody the vast majority of the time, while the other voices seem to be there merely as harmonic support. Again, there is nothing objectively wrong with this, as what you have produced is quite beautiful. There is still, however, merit to giving equal credence (or striving for it) to all of the voices present in a work of music consisting of homogeneous instruments.
• You've provided a great many expressional instructions in this work, notably in the latter half of the piece. These are thoughtful additions to any piece of music intended to be performed by live musicians, but they can be overdone and a bit distracting. Bear in mind that some expressions are achieved by the simple sounding of an instrument's register (for example, notes played on the G string of a violin are going to sound poco pesante whether you provide the expression or not).

This is all so helpful. 

In regards to harmonic motion, yes, I think you're right. I'm starting to foray a bit into Baroque counterpoint, so improving my voice-leading is something I've been trying to work on. 

Vocal independence. I admit to struggling a bit with orchestrating the melody. Obviously, in traditional, theory-book voice-leading, the soprano always carries the melody. In a lot of choral music (but certainly far from most of it), this tends to be true as well. Orchestral music, I think, tends to have the most "vocal independence." In hindsight, I think I should have given more melodic attention to the 2nds. Even if it was something as simple as copy-pasting the 1st violin part into the 2nd and vice versa, the sound wouldn't change and the musicians would find more enjoyment. But I think your comment was more timbre-oriented. In my experience as a baritone, oftentimes. the low voices have the melody only when singing with the other low voices (and the sopranos and altos take a break for a verse or section); perhaps that's a bit of a cliché. Rather than giving a melody to the violas, celli, and basses while the violins rested, I tried to give the vast majority of countermelodies, suspensions, and other items of harmonic (and somewhat melodic) interest to the lower voices. And, although much of the subtler motivic development was in the lower voices, I did give those solos to the viola and cello at the end. Perhaps that atones for my sin a little bit? 😉

Yeah, the Italian... Sadly, I somehow didn't notice this until rehearsals had begun and it was problematic to revise and reprint the scores. You're right in saying that many of them are redundant. If this is miraculously ever performed again, fixing that is at the top of my list. 

2 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

From a listener's perspective, nothing sounded/felt out of place. As a viewer (of the score) I was a little distracted by the footnotes explaining standard musical notation, such as the Roman numerals for the strings and the n for decrescendo al niente. I'm not sure if you really need those footnotes; they seem redundant. (But that could just be me.).

In terms of the footnotes, those were a later addition (as were the bowings). When consulting with the conductor before the reading, he advised me to insert them for the players, just in case. But yes, a more experienced orchestra probably wouldn't need any of that.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! 

Jacob

1 hour ago, JWNewton said:

I'm intrigued by your feelings about the choral style; that's an astute observation. I would love to hear more about why the style was both enjoyable and detracting.

It's likely a matter of preference. The strings are more versatile than the human voice, both in technique and in range. I was hoping this piece would showcase some of that flexibility. BUT... I see now that it was written for a youth orchestra, and you run the risk of ruining the playability by making it too difficult for young players.

1 hour ago, JWNewton said:

This is all so helpful. 

In regards to harmonic motion, yes, I think you're right. I'm starting to foray a bit into Baroque counterpoint, so improving my voice-leading is something I've been trying to work on. 

Vocal independence. I admit to struggling a bit with orchestrating the melody. Obviously, in traditional, theory-book voice-leading, the soprano always carries the melody. In a lot of choral music (but certainly far from most of it), this tends to be true as well. Orchestral music, I think, tends to have the most "vocal independence." In hindsight, I think I should have given more melodic attention to the 2nds. Even if it was something as simple as copy-pasting the 1st violin part into the 2nd and vice versa, the sound wouldn't change and the musicians would find more enjoyment. But I think your comment was more timbre-oriented. In my experience as a baritone, oftentimes. the low voices have the melody only when singing with the other low voices (and the sopranos and altos take a break for a verse or section); perhaps that's a bit of a cliché. Rather than giving a melody to the violas, celli, and basses while the violins rested, I tried to give the vast majority of countermelodies, suspensions, and other items of harmonic (and somewhat melodic) interest to the lower voices. And, although much of the subtler motivic development was in the lower voices, I did give those solos to the viola and cello at the end. Perhaps that atones for my sin a little bit? 😉

Yeah, the Italian... Sadly, I somehow didn't notice this until rehearsals had begun and it was problematic to revise and reprint the scores. You're right in saying that many of them are redundant. If this is miraculously ever performed again, fixing that is at the top of my list. 

I noted how well you treated the violas here. They are deserving of love, too, just like the spotlight-hungry violins and cellos. Yes, your sins were atoned by the lovely solos at the end. My comment was more directed at the countermelodies. You succeeded in making the harmonic support interesting for the lower strings. But it was still harmonic support (and they'll always know, deep down, that you loved the 1st violins the most). Joking aside, there really was nothing wrong with this piece. I'm sure it can be improved, but substantially so? I don't know about that. At this point, changes made would need to be merely stylistic unless you're willing to undergo some major revisions that would alter the entire message of the work. My two bits: it's not worth it.

I'm curious to see how you handle material composed idiomatically for a string ensemble. That's where the real gauntlet is thrown down. 😉 

I wish I knew how string instruments really worked and how things like marking upbows/downbows would make parts of the music sound or what strings a note is played on. Seems like you know the string world and I know more of the wind world!

Feeling like this piece could have used a bigger moment past the sections with tutti ensemble at forte (and DB at mf) with some dissonance and just a romantically painful sound. If this is based off of choir music, I think I can hear exactly the type of sound in my head. But, if it is not meant to reach that type of singing, that is not really an issue. 

All seems well engraved, the performance is great, it is very pretty, it is not too short. It does not have me walking away with an earworm or a standout moment, but I feel like I had a nice experience and enjoyed it/did not dread any second of it! It was a great project, and it works very well for the space it is in. Thanks for the pretty and enjoyable listen.