La marée astrale (The astral tide) Orchestra & solo trumpet

Hello dear young composers.

Here is my new trinket, composed for orchestra and solo trumpet.

Samples, of course, (unfortunately)...

I hope you like it!

Hi again @Krisp!

I love the bombastic beginning!  I recognize certain melodic allusions to previous works of yours in this piece (but don't ask me to name which ones! LoL)  4:58 especially sounds like one of your songs that you sing with orchestral accompaniment.  I love the flutter-tongue on the trumpet!  Thanks for sharing.

Bravo! Indeed, this is indeed the case, and moreover this passage that you mention precisely gives the name to my play "the astral tide"... (hantise at 2:52) and it is also about a similar coda in « l’hiver qui vient », for voice and orchestra, composed when i was Young… So I drew on all this without imagining that someone would have the insight to notice it... Congratulations again for your very good musical memory!

Thank you in any case for your listening and this enlightened comment!

This is great! really like the varied use of color, and the overall dark and chaotic. I also really enjoyed some of the contrast you created, particularly around 3:40 with the more lyrical strings, and also the shift to the more mysterious mood at around 5:00.

Would you be willing to share the score? Would definitely like to take a deeper dive into analyzing this one!

Hello @Krisp. I really enjoyed this work, it has a really majestic and chaotic feeling that resembles in some ways the astral tide mentioned in the title. 

About the instrumentation: Is the low sound at 0:43 a muted brass instrument. If it is, which one? And is it a wolf howl what I am hearing at 5:07?

I think I will have to listen to this piece more times in order to completely Grasp its structure. But from what I have understood, (this will probably be something completely different of what you have thought of). The piece is based around two “motifs”. The first being two repeated notes, followed by an ascent, stated in the orchestral introduction, and the second, mordent-like introduced at the beginning of the trumpet solo. Then, what you base the piece of is on different sections where you twist this motifs and develop them as different ones (This would take counting the melody at 0:59 as a deviation of the mordent motif, as well as 1:14.) (And I suppose the deviations from the first motif are the when it has three instead of two notes before the ascent, or where there is no ascent at all) And if the above is true, then the part at 4:56 is a combination of both motifs, where the melody is moving in the same way as the mordant motif, but repeating notes. Really clever.

I am in awe by the amount of motivical economity of the piece

Thanks for sharing

Manuel

Hello ! Thank you For this surprisingly attentive reading ! 
So at 0.43  we have firstly the solo trumpet of the staccato orchestra  on C# F# C# In  triples  Then immediately a response from the solo tenor trombone on C F C In triples too, and the last answer of the motif comes to the cor solo staccato on F# B F#. At the bass the double bass in fifth. Ostinatis in violins 2 altern 1 (Parallel thirds) And flutes too...

The "motifs" that you have well identified serve me as building materials. The first this kind of call in the fourth, then the second pattern based on a game of minor third descending and then ascending to the half-tone, various mutations, actually leads to 4:56, but it would be tedious to list all this.

(The wolf-owl bravo! It was the little night wink... Haha.. I wasn't sure if anyone heard it)... (In French it's "chouette hulotte" but I prefer the name you give it and that I didn't know)

Thank you for your more detailed analysis of the motifs, I will be listening to the piece  having in mind those you have pointed out

And about the owl sound, I think it is really good to include elements that our modern technology is able to include, if they are not too disturbing, they can help portray an atmosphere without breaking the mood (reminds me of the pines of Rome by Respighi).
 

When I heard it, I thought it was a wolf howling. However, as I am not a native English speaker I might have not expressed it right, and it caused confusion, making you think that wolf owl is the name of the animal (the wolf “howl” has nothing to do with an owl, it is just the name of the sound wolves make. And as the words howl and owl are similar, I might have confused you, sorry 😅)But now that you have said it was an owl, I definitely recognise it.

Thanks for resolving my doubts about your piece

Oh, my mistake. It seems that the "chouette hulotte" is still said differently in English (I don't know either...) The mystery remains!

Hi @Krisp Papa Jean,

Sorry for my very late reply. I wanna reply at the moment you posted it but I didn’t’t have the energy then. I have nothing to add to Peter’s wonderful musical memory, gmm’s comment on orchestral colour when he’s a great symphonist or Manuel’s notice of motive. I am just here to share my awe in your always wonderful orchestral colour and narrative power. Thx for sharing your wonderful music!!

Henry

Thank you Henry for your attentive listening! It is always appreciable to be heard by so many connoisseurs on this forum and your opinion is a treasure for me!

I'm a little paused for the composition because I'm leaving a Verdi production (it's my job as a chorister) and I was a lot on the road and on the move.

It will take me a little time to recharge my envy batteries. I don't know if it's identical with you... I sometimes have the impression that the composition phases put my reserves a little flat so I need a break.

I will have to find other ideas during the fall. But just talking about it here already makes me want to go back in front of my music paper!

8 minutes ago, Krisp said:

I'm a little paused for the composition because I'm leaving a Verdi production (it's my job as a chorister) and I was a lot on the road and on the move.

Wow that’s why you sing this well! 

8 minutes ago, Krisp said:

It will take me a little time to recharge my envy batteries. I don't know if it's identical with you... I sometimes have the impression that the composition phases put my reserves a little flat so I need a break.

Yeah it’s the same for me. When I finish a piece or one big part I always need time to recharge myself before going back to writing, which is the case for me now. When I finish that Lamentoso part in my Sextet plus facing some challenges in my life I had zero energy to compose at all, not until recently I started to pick up my composer’s pen to write anything. That’s why I could never be a composer rely on his compositions, since I could never write good pieces quickly…

11 minutes ago, Krisp said:

I will have to find other ideas during the fall. But just talking about it here already makes me want to go back in front of my music paper!

Excited for that!

Henry

I also take advantage of this writing break to work on visual projects: photos, videos or drawings for order-made illustrations. This activity also takes me a lot of time, Forces me to meet certain deadlines, and I'm already late...

We all have overflowing lives!