Short piece for Clarinet Quintet

A short piece for clarinet quintet. Looking for feedback! 

What a Jolly Good Ride!   This is a very inviting work ... it has wit and charm.   The rhythms and exchanges are playful and move you along.   I enjoyed the contrasting mid-section too ... which prevented the work from becoming too predicable.

Mark

2 hours ago, MJFOBOE said:

What a Jolly Good Ride!   This is a very inviting work ... it has wit and charm.   The rhythms and exchanges are playful and move you along.   I enjoyed the contrasting mid-section too ... which prevented the work from becoming too predicable.

Mark

 

Thank you, Mark! I appreciate it!

I wrote this piece a while ago and the thing I always note when I come back to it is the ending. I think I just sort of decided to end it there a bit arbitrarily. And maybe in a way that's a bit cookie-cutter in that it could be the ending to another piece just as well. Maybe I should go back and make the ending callback to the opening motif in some way. Maybe it already does to a small extent. Wondering if lingering too much on an ending would take away from the piece.

I enjoyed this very much. It has a nice bounce.

Hi @UrKr,

The piece is really playful and energetic! The four range  of  the clarinets are all featured and well used. Your motivic usage is also great as the piece is really coherent! I notice in b.47 you use that Ab G F E motive! I have written a clarinet quintet before and that’s exactly my main motive of the whole piece!!!
 

For the scoring, I would use C# instead of the first Db of that particular phrase. The clarinet can be written in a transposed score instead of the actual pitch. Also, I’m note sure if some of the slurs can be played, for example b.16 to 20 2nd violin, and b.35 to 39. B.50 clarinet’s Arco marking should be deleted.

I feel like the ending does not end firmly as it’s in G minor. Maybe you can end the piece in tonic C minor?

Thx for sharing!

Henry

1 hour ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hi @UrKr,

The piece is really playful and energetic! The four range  of  the clarinets are all featured and well used. Your motivic usage is also great as the piece is really coherent! I notice in b.47 you use that Ab G F E motive! I have written a clarinet quintet before and that’s exactly my main motive of the whole piece!!!
 

For the scoring, I would use C# instead of the first Db of that particular phrase. The clarinet can be written in a transposed score instead of the actual pitch. Also, I’m note sure if some of the slurs can be played, for example b.16 to 20 2nd violin, and b.35 to 39. B.50 clarinet’s Arco marking should be deleted.

I feel like the ending does not end firmly as it’s in G minor. Maybe you can end the piece in tonic C minor?

Thx for sharing!

Henry

 

Thank you! Could you link me to that quintet? Is it the one in C minor?

For the scoring, if the piece was going to be performed by musicians I would definitely diligently make it more sensical for reading. Frankly a lot of the markings are there for the NotePerformer playback. So the slurs aren't so much an instruction to play it in one bow but just a phrase/legato marking. 

Thank you for the note on the ending! I think I'll revise it someday soon and I'll keep that in mind.

35 minutes ago, UrKr said:

Thank you! Could you link me to that quintet? Is it the one in C minor?

Yeah of course!

Unfortunately it’s in crappy Sibelius sound…🤮

12 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Yeah of course!

Unfortunately it’s in crappy Sibelius sound…🤮

 

Cool! I've actually been listening it for the past hour. I think on first glance my favourite is the 3rd movement. I would love to listen to the thing with some better playback though! The Sibelius sounds kind of always sound like an organ to me. I can tell the ideas but it takes more imagination to appreciate some of them. Like repeated fast notes in the strings with sibelius playback have this machine-gun sound that's miles away from what is probably intended. 

Is there a reason you're not at least running it through NotePerformer? It's not a live performance, but certainly closer. I mean it's an hour long piece with years of work put into it. Do you have enough aural imagination to appreciate it, to your satisfaction, just in your head ?? 🙂 Did you ever listen to it with the trial version of NP at least?

42 minutes ago, UrKr said:

Cool! I've actually been listening it for the past hour. I think on first glance my favourite is the 3rd movement. I would love to listen to the thing with some better playback though! The Sibelius sounds kind of always sound like an organ to me. I can tell the ideas but it takes more imagination to appreciate some of them. Like repeated fast notes in the strings with sibelius playback have this machine-gun sound that's miles away from what is probably intended. 

Yeah I am very unsatisfied at that crappy Sibelius sound!! It’s so bad. However I still compose it with that crappy sound now lol!

42 minutes ago, UrKr said:

Is there a reason you're not at least running it through NotePerformer? It's not a live performance, but certainly closer. I mean it's an hour long piece with years of work put into it. Do you have enough aural imagination to appreciate it, to your satisfaction, just in your head ?? 🙂 Did you ever listen to it with the trial version of NP at least?

Actually I do have the NP version of the quintet! However, I would only wanna post that version when I make my final edit on the quintet!! I would say it’s much better than the Sibelius rendition!!

Thx for your listening!

Henry

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu I see, I see. I'll definitely listen to that rendition when it's posted!