Scherzo in D-flat Major for orchestra

It took me a few months, but I finally completed my most recent work for orchestra.

This piece is nominally in scherzo-trio form, with some slight modifications. Each scherzo is itself also binary in the manner of a sonata form exposition and recapitulation. The trio is actually a waltz, slowly built up from nothing via the gradual introduction of cliches. Though it seems to be unrelated to the scherzo at first, I bridge the gap with the transition back into the scherzo. The strict metric modulation to precisely half-tempo for the trio is critical. In the concluding fugato, both themes from the scherzo are combined simultaneously.

Score video: 

Wow! That's mature orchestral technique! I'm particularly afraid of composing a scherzo, because that fast tempo easily drives me off to no place and I easily get lost with its harmonic and melodic content, let alone an orchestral scherzo! Your romanze is also amazing as well! Great job!

I had to listen to this a few times to make sense of it. But once I did, this is quite musically complex and frankly, well done. I think the poor instrument sounds put me off initially, because I don't feel the instruments are well balanced enough. So I had to struggle to hear the different parts of the instrumentation. But once I got past that, this is actually a very well done composition.

I love the change up to the middle part, and at around 3:40, I think you go through 3 different key changes in a matter of 10 seconds. Pretty damn cool if you ask me. I feel the piece gets even more harmonically complex as it continues on, and you bring in some nice dissonance in the second half but you don't overdo it. It feels like just the right amount to me.

And now, to the audio output...

Now it could just be the sounds you are using, but I think that you need to work on your instrumentation balance. Strings are really underpowered, need more volume in general, and they make the piece sound garbled if you aren't listening intently enough. The winds and brass are just too overpowering. There's a part where you are using the cello at around 1 minute in, and I want to hear the cello play. It's struggling to satisfy my ear's needs there. The balancing act is definitely not an easy thing to do, and I myself sometimes have trouble with balancing, but this is definitely something to keep in mind.

Great job, love the work, and my favorite part was the transition to the middle section!

Nice scherzo!  I love the energy and vivaciousness.  I guess it's a personal choice for you to have this in 3/4 and not in 3/8 but I do believe that usually when a piece is fast enough to be conducted in one then 3/8 is more commonly used.  I love the sudden and laborious timpani at the end that brings the whole thing to a perfect conclusion!  The key changes are also really nice here.  I like how you went from Db major to C# minor to E major all of a sudden - making great use of parallel minor to relative major closely related modulations to actually get quite far away from your original key quite quickly!  Very clever.  Thanks for sharing!

22 minutes ago, chopin said:

Strings are really underpowered, need more volume in general, and they make the piece sound garbled if you aren't listening intently enough. The winds and brass are just too overpowering. There's a part where you are using the cello at around 1 minute in, and I want to hear the cello play. It's struggling to satisfy my ear's needs there. The balancing act is definitely not an easy thing to do, and I myself sometimes have trouble with balancing, but this is definitely something to keep in mind.

 

The sounds are probably most of the balance problem, as the string patches I have access to with the prepackaged Garritan library that came with Finale have a rather weak attack. So adding staccato, or asking really fast sequences of notes to be played in general, puts a real dent in the apparent volume. What you're hearing is what is the result after I already tweaked the balance in the mixer to make the winds a little bit quieter.

In general I try to avoid writing such that the computer playback sounds optimal instead of such that a real orchestra would sound optimal. I admit I don't have a whole lot of experience writing for real orchestras though, so my inner ear may be off. I may very well be, to turn a phrase, "pulling a Schumann".

I'm only an amateur who is unlikely to ever have much played unless I perform it myself (which I have indeed done), so I can't say I'm particularly interested in spending good money to improve my sound library, nor in spending time creating more realistic mockups in third-party software. I spend enough time just writing the stuff in the first place. The Human Playback output is just "good enough" to get the point across, I suppose. At least it isn't Musescore.

29 minutes ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Nice scherzo!  I love the energy and vivaciousness.  I guess it's a personal choice for you to have this in 3/4 and not in 3/8 but I do believe that usually when a piece is fast enough to be conducted in one then 3/8 is more commonly used.  I love the sudden and laborious timpani at the end that brings the whole thing to a perfect conclusion!  The key changes are also really nice here.  I like how you went from Db major to C# minor to E major all of a sudden - making great use of parallel minor to relative major closely related modulations to actually get quite far away from your original key quite quickly!  Very clever.  Thanks for sharing!

 

Thank you!

The decision to put it in 3/4 was a psychological one. I've been mildly interested in the psychology of notation and have tried to exploit it purposefully.

I relate it in my head to the Baroque technique of notating slow movements with really short note values to convey by means of the physical impossibility of playing it any faster that it was supposed to be slow. Likewise, conversely I use the absence of any short note values to convey the sense that the music is supposed to be flying by at high speed, as there are no short note values to slow you down.

The other main psychological notation decision I made was to begin the trio in Eb minor rather than the more "sensible" D# minor, which would have avoided the awkward jump over into sharps later on to avoid landing in theoretical key land. (Originally, I had even left everything in flats, and the middle section of the trio was subsequently notated in Bbb major! I of course realized this was needlessly obtuse and fixed it.) I still feel that Eb psychologically conveys a different, mainly darker feeling than D#, though, so I wanted to at least still start off in Eb and flip to sharps purely for convenience.

Really enjoyed the rhythmic irregularities and the harmonic shifts - you kept me guessing where you were going to go next. I can't remember where I saw a Beethoven scherzo described as going "at the speed of thought" but your piece brought that phrase to mind. One suggestion, though -- how about eliminating the big stodgy rall. right at the end? Just plow headlong into the last bar and keep the energy up all the way!

10 hours ago, Tom Statler said:

Really enjoyed the rhythmic irregularities and the harmonic shifts - you kept me guessing where you were going to go next. I can't remember where I saw a Beethoven scherzo described as going "at the speed of thought" but your piece brought that phrase to mind. One suggestion, though -- how about eliminating the big stodgy rall. right at the end? Just plow headlong into the last bar and keep the energy up all the way!

I was definitely inspired quite a bit by Beethoven scherzi.

The sense that you get that the energy level drops is quite intentional, and it was designed to solve the problem of me feeling like I was unable to end the piece with a raw extension or increase in energy level from the big contrapuntally dense tutti at rehearsal FF. So instead I decided to drop the energy level, but I also didn't want to try to be cute and go for something ironic or deliberately anticlimactic (like a "throwaway" ending). So at some point I was clearly obligated to backtrack and bring the energy level back up at least a little to give an appropriate sense of finality, yet I didn't want it to sound indecisive or have too large a contrast. Pumping the brakes felt like a simple way to sap some of the energy back out and still allow me to use a full tutti.

Another reason I decided to go with this kind of ending is because I've done the opposite many times -- even after an initial drop in energy from the climax, I build it back up and wind up with what I might call a "whirlwind ending". I thought I'd go for some variety and do something else for once, by slowing a piece to a stop rather than going out with a bang.

The aspect of the composition that caught my attention - was it's connection the the world war 2 emigres who went to Hollywood, for example, composers such as Eric Wolfgang Korngold and his movie scores.  The work has the same romantic style lyricism and fluidity that makes the work fun to listen to and enjoy. 

Mark

7 hours ago, MJFOBOE said:

The aspect of the composition that caught my attention - was it's connection the the world war 2 emigres who went to Hollywood, for example, composers such as Eric Wolfgang Korngold and his movie scores.  The work has the same romantic style lyricism and fluidity that makes the work fun to listen to and enjoy. 

Mark

Thank you.

Curiously, I wasn't thinking about Korngold at all when writing this. In fact I know very little of his work.

I just write in common practice style and enjoy a good tune! I try to have my own voice.

Nice nice music.

I was afraid of the transitions to and out the middle part, when I read it was a waltz and etc... But I have to say that they work well. i think using a few instruments in the beginning of the parts is a good idea. 

Good uses of the winds. Perhaps the brass section is les used, sometimes with solist instruments, or in the tutti.

Good job.

5 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

Nice nice music.

I was afraid of the transitions to and out the middle part, when I read it was a waltz and etc... But I have to say that they work well. i think using a few instruments in the beginning of the parts is a good idea. 

Good uses of the winds. Perhaps the brass section is les used, sometimes with solist instruments, or in the tutti.

Good job.

 

I was quite happy with my transition out of the waltz, with the gradual blending of the contrasting meters. It's an effect I've never tried to do before and I also felt it worked really well.

Very good! I appreciate the attention to the engraving detail, which for me is always a promising sign. I agree with chopin, though, that the audio playback is weak. You could either spend time fine-tuning the mixing, or just downgrade to basic midi sounds, which would probably solve the problem. Personally, I prefer midi to fancy sound libraries, but that's just me. 

A couple notes: 

p. 28 / final chord: That low A in the second bassoon is going to sound a little muddy. It's not lower than the double basses, so we still have a root-position chord, but I'd much prefer a unison D with the first bassoon. It's just a cleaner sound. Oh, and some people might take issue with the voice-leading in the second trumpet here (it resolves from A to F# while other instruments resolve from G to F#), but this is not uncommon in orchestral music and the second trumpet isn't playing the soprano or the bass, so it should be fine. 

p. 85 / final two chords: Generally good voicing with all the chord-tones being filled in in the upper registers and the horns stepping in just below the woodwinds. But I would have the second trombone provide the root of the final chord if it were me, otherwise the brass are playing a second inversion chord in the final bar. If you really want the Ab there, then I would have the first bassoon play it. That way, both the woodwind and brass sections have complete Db major chords with the root in the bass. There's nothing technically "wrong" with giving the brass section a 6/4 chord (this is a symphony, after all, and other instruments are there to play the root of the chord), but if you look at it from the brass section's point of view, the brass players are going to notice the missing root and find it odd, especially when they play this chord in a sectional and don't hear the other instruments.

These are very nitpicky details, though, and they don't detract from what is overall a very fine piece. Good work!

29 minutes ago, Vogel said:

p. 28 / final chord: That low A in the second bassoon is going to sound a little muddy. It's not lower than the double basses, so we still have a root-position chord, but I'd much prefer a unison D with the first bassoon. It's just a cleaner sound.

I must have written that part many months ago at this point (I do tend to work very linearly), but if I can remember correctly I think muddied it up a little on purpose to avoid having the chord sound too perfectly "final". I saved the more naturally-voiced cadence for the very end.

This is really good! I really liked how you layered a lot of rhythmically contrasting ideas on top of each other, and used a lot of phrases with unusual numbers of measures (6-measures, 5-measures, etc.) This gave the piece a very "quirky" feel, in a good way, that is very fitting for the Scherzo genre..

I really the moments were the busy texture comes to a climax, then falls away leaving only a few voices (the clarinet at K and the flute shorly afterward at m.197 for example). The only thing I will say is there were a couple of places were it felt a little too busy, specifically around p43-44, 46-47, and a few places leading up to the recap at m.53, and also closer to the end on p73-74, until FF on p77. Since there's so much going on, it made it hard for me to figure out what the melody was supposed to be, and to me at least it just seemed a little overwhelming. 

Also, the Trumpet solo at Z is certainly possible, but is in the lower register of the instrument. In my opinion this might work better on Horn, since this is in a very comfortable and soloistic range for that instrument. 

Overall I really enjoyed listening and think this is a very well-written piece, thanks for sharing!

15 minutes ago, gmm said:

the Trumpet solo at Z is certainly possible, but is in the lower register of the instrument. In my opinion this might work better on Horn, since this is in a very comfortable and soloistic range for that instrument. 

I think a horn would sound too "nice". I liked the nasally effect of the low trumpet, plus the fact that I got to put the trumpet to a somewhat unusual use (at least for the style) there, all in keeping with the scherzo feel.