"Dawn" for piano, harp, violin, cello, and flute

Hello everyone! This is a bit different from what I have shared so far. In fact, it is the transcription almost not at all elaborated of a piano piece improvised many years ago. My wife says it makes her think of the dawn in africa, so I'll call it "Dawn" even tho in my files it's a "Quintetto." 🙂 For the whole piece, the beat should stay the same, even though the time changes quite often. There is not much interplay between the different instruments, in fact I picked them only for color. Suggestions and critiques always superwelcome. Maybe I'll try and imitate @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu and record and post the piano version if I'm not too rusty.Quintetto clean - Full Score.pdf

Hi @Giacomo925 ,

Love to see your new post here! I like the harmonic language in it and I think you have learnt from the impressionistic composers with the harmonic language and the fluidity of the music! I think it does depict the Dawn you would like to represent!

I think the chamber writing can be more varied here. The combination of instruments is very good here with four different timbres: however it's always two lines with doublings. This will reduce the individuality of each instrument and their timbre cannot be displayed here independently. Also the sound will be less rich. Probably you should consider adding more new countermelodies and acconpaniments instead of two voices throughout! I knoe that it's the elaborated version of a piano piece, so probably you should add more lines to the music and make the music more idiomatically suited to the instruments! E.g. the wide leap btw b.89 to 90 in piano left hand will be too wide! The flute is never in its middle to high range to shie its own colour.

I can barely play the piano right hand's interval of tenth in b.73, but adding an appreggios with be great there, also it can be played more easily!

Thanks for sharing! I quite enjoy this one!

Henry

bravo for this great melodic richness.
the accompaniment is also very well done giving this impression of mobility and also of a rise in tension before the accomplishment of the last part.
I've often found myself quite in trouble writing for the harp because it's always very tricky to properly measure what is possible or not depending on the pedals.
I would have avoided asking myself these questions by writing a harped harmonic part for him. but I admit that in the demo the lining sounds pretty good (it will also require a very precise tuning of the piano and the harp to avoid beats)

12/16 huh, nice, but possibly this will be the most trivial thing of this piece since the melody lines going back and forth are quite fascinating. 

There's a bit of overlap in some pedal marking (M14 for example) as well as other scoring "mistakes" that could hinder readability (more overlaps, redundant silences, passages with lots of additional lines instead of 8vas...). Playability on the piano seems compromised where Henry marked, not sure if the harp has severe scoring issues (let's assume not) but as a rule of thumb always mind accidentals, specially if they're opposite to the tonality the piece lives in most of the time.

This piece has its own personality and the combination of instruments —and specially, how you make use of that combination— gives it even more uniqueness. The use of dynamics and pedals seems alright to me. 

Lastly, you have a repeated tempo marking on M90 which should not be present, likely. My suggestion, apart from getting rid of redundant silences everywhere, would be placing an "a tempo" instead of the literal tempo marking (thus hiding it).

In summary, a great, colorful and quite unique piece whose problems if any, lie mostly on the engraving (in my opinion).

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.


 

Hi @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, @Krisp and @Omicronrg9, thanks for listening and commenting! I agree with Henry that it's a pity to just double voices, but I was looking for color more than anything. I know it's a big sin to fall in love with your own music--but I did grow fond of the melodic exchange (thanks for remarking on it, Omicron!) and I would feel bad to add countermelodies. That said, definitely questionable that piano and harp can play together like written (and I should ask harpist friends if this is playable at all). I have tried to fix most of the engraving issues highlighted by Omicron.

PS: Speaking of engraving, I agree that the tempo marking on M90 should not be repeated, but I don't how to otherwise make Sibelius playback go back to the original tempo. "A tempo" does not work or I haven't been able to find it. Any advice?

On 3/19/2023 at 5:22 PM, Giacomo925 said:

PS: Speaking of engraving, I agree that the tempo marking on M90 should not be repeated, but I don't how to otherwise make Sibelius playback go back to the original tempo. "A tempo" does not work or I haven't been able to find it. Any advice?

If sibelius allows "hiding" stuff, then do the tempo changes you want and hide them. If you want to create a poco rit. you can manually add a tempo marking to each note (or each several notes, but the bigger the interval the more abrupt it will be) in order to get more accurate (Musescore 3 has a plugin to do so, perhaps sibelius has such function too). If the only issue is going back to the tempo, just leave that tempo marking there, hide it, and make a text in the appropiate place saying "a tempo". The text will do nothing playback-wise, but "playback tricks" have little to no meaning to a potential performer which will naturally understand the "a tempo" much better.

Quite a dense explanation, sorry.

Kind regards!!  

thanks!