Der Oregon Trail

The title of this piece translates loosely to 'Trek on the Oregon Trail' and it refers to the wagon trains that were travelling across the continent America to find a new home sometime in the 19th century. It starts simple, not certain what is to come. While travelling through the prairies, deserts and mountains, the group comes upon different challenges and also beautiful passages. When they reach their destination, it gets calmer again and the last chord represents the group settling down in their new home.

 Der Oregon Trail-score.pdf.pdf 

Most pleasant. Atmospheric. I liked the changing moods and the way you handled them - nothing too intrusive - and you got a lot into a fairly short piece. Even so it sounds complete.

The instrumentation is well balanced and rendered. It's colourful partly because of the way you touch in colours - like the muted horns in bar 14. I liked the way you spread the brass - example, bar 28. The ending (to me) is brilliant with those deep chords on the lower strings and brass. And you've clearly paid a lot of attention to detail in the score. 

Well done, a pleasant listen.

Hi @AM-Valkyrie,

Welcome to the forum!

Like @Quinn has said this is a delicious party of tone colour. The details are all really well made like what Quinn has said. What I would comment on is the form and flow of the piece, as I feel like this is the main weakness. I think the mood varies too quickly with not enough development of each section. You have five different moods and tempi in less than 4 minutes and to me it's too much variety that will reduce the coherence of the piece. For the thematic materials I cannot discern their relations except section F when the opening material recapitulates. Each section is wonderful in their own rights with beautiful, unique and distinctive, but combined together it's not too coherent and reasonable for me, even if the piece is based on the poem.

You are young and with your talent I'm sure you can write even better piece in the future. Congrats on this and thx for sharing your piece and joining us! Remember to review some pieces too if you feel interested!

Henry

19 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hi @AM-Valkyrie,

Welcome to the forum!

Like @Quinn has said this is a delicious party of tone colour. The details are all really well made like what Quinn has said. What I would comment on is the form and flow of the piece, as I feel like this is the main weakness. I think the mood varies too quickly with not enough development of each section. You have five different moods and tempi in less than 4 minutes and to me it's too much variety that will reduce the coherence of the piece. For the thematic materials I cannot discern their relations except section F when the opening material recapitulates. Each section is wonderful in their own rights with beautiful, unique and distinctive, but combined together it's not too coherent and reasonable for me, even if the piece is based on the poem.

You are young and with your talent I'm sure you can write even better piece in the future. Congrats on this and thx for sharing your piece and joining us! Remember to review some pieces too if you feel interested!

Henry

 

 

Thank you both so much for the in-depth feedback! I should have joined this forum earlier lol. 

This piece is originally part of an album for piano I started. And there I purposely wanted the moods to vary a lot for the nature of what it depicts. I orchestrated it then for a competition where I sadly didn't get selected, but yeah, I have to admit that as an orchestral piece, there is too much change in moods to soon. It would really make more sense to make it a complete symphonic poem 10 - 20 minutes with the same themes, but I was under time constraint. It's hard to notice but I also reused part B in part D albeit very shortly and in a different key. I have to say that flow is what I have to work most on in the future. I quite enjoyed the experience of writing for an orchestra though, having done it only once before. There is so much opportunity in color out there...

Anyway, thank you so much again for listening. I hope I can stick around here, provide feedback to others and share a piece every now and then. Looks like a great community!

Are you a Wagner lover?  I think your name really gives you away LoL.  And the mood and type of chromaticism you employ is quite Wagnerian with last minute alterations by half-step changing the nature of each chord at the last moment.  I think this definitely has the vibe of a Wagner prelude - did you know he also wrote a symphony before he wrote any of his operas?  I had a midi of it back in the day.

What were the duration restrictions of the competition you entered this into?  If the entries had to be less than 5 minutes then it's understandable that you jammed so much seemingly disparate material into such a short time.  But for me where the music really loses continuity is in the measures coming up to rehearsal C where the accelerando seems to come from out of nowhere.

But this is very lush and romantic music overall and quite enjoyable!  I love the richness of the many string chords you employ.  From my own personal taste I tend to stay away from such aggressive brass writing but that's just a personal pet peeve.  Thanks for sharing!

19 minutes ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Are you a Wagner lover?  I think your name really gives you away LoL.  And the mood and type of chromaticism you employ is quite Wagnerian with last minute alterations by half-step changing the nature of each chord at the last moment.  I think this definitely has the vibe of a Wagner prelude - did you know he also wrote a symphony before he wrote any of his operas?  I had a midi of it back in the day.

What were the duration restrictions of the competition you entered this into?  If the entries had to be less than 5 minutes then it's understandable that you jammed so much seemingly disparate material into such a short time.  But for me where the music really loses continuity is in the measures coming up to rehearsal C where the accelerando seems to come from out of nowhere.

But this is very lush and romantic music overall and quite enjoyable!  I love the richness of the many string chords you employ.  From my own personal taste I tend to stay away from such aggressive brass writing but that's just a personal pet peeve.  Thanks for sharing!

 

Interestingly, I have never ventured much into Wagner's music, mainly because I don't have enough patience for operas haha. My name is actually derived from my favorite car. I know that my style is similar to Wagner's though, one of my favorite composers is Chausson who is said to have copied him sometimes.

And yeah, the time limit for the competition was 6 minutes. I could have stretched the slower parts probably to make it more seamless, but to be honest I didn't have much time left. Very glad you like it though. I have to admit that I really love a full brass sound every now and then even though I have little idea how hard it is to play. 

Some of you might know me from the discord where I have been active every now and then in the last 2 years. I have a few other pieces on my youtube channel, I just didn't want to post them here all at once because that would make me seem like an attention seeker lol. They're also of considerably lesser quality. 

https://youtube.com/@amvalkyrie6496?si=diYCQnRvDlSLH7DT

10 hours ago, AM-Valkyrie said:

Interestingly, I have never ventured much into Wagner's music, mainly because I don't have enough patience for operas haha. My name is actually derived from my favorite car. I know that my style is similar to Wagner's though, one of my favorite composers is Chausson who is said to have copied him sometimes.

Curiously I felt a few Bruckner moments, Bruckner carrying forward the chromatic harmony Wagner learned from Liszt. Wagner's harmonic style changed as a result of his sojourn with Liszt. It's noticeable after Die Walkure when he started on Tristan. The augmented 6th at the opening of Tristan - a harmony Liszt had already used in his B minor Sonata of 1853. Wagner seemed to abandon his triadic harmony after that. 

Der Oregon Trail seemed to embrace a chromaticism (even in the first two bars) which at once snared my interest. I look forward to more of your work.

Hi my comment is a bit different.  The piece is entitled Oregon Trail ... Americana? Yes, however, the music has a central European flavor to it - in its construction and texture.

Mark

18 hours ago, MJFOBOE said:

Hi my comment is a bit different.  The piece is entitled Oregon Trail ... Americana? Yes, however, the music has a central European flavor to it - in its construction and texture.

Mark

 

Yes, I have purposely went for a middle european style as that is what I'm most comfortable with. I find that a piece about a certain place doesn't need to be written in said style, even though it can be cool if it does. This piece was going to be part of an album about the western where I just managed to finish 2 pieces though. Have a couple drafts but don't think I'll finish those. The other one has a quite distinctive style that I can't really pinpoint down. In case your interested

https://youtu.be/YURnwFqz4a0?si=11CtTzOrGgD-eSZ1