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> Friends-
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> As much as I would have liked to have been more active in this group,I'm afraid it has been impossible. I have, however, recently completed a piece of music that I would like comments and criticisms of- at the end of this message is a link to the rough draft of my semester composition for school this year. Juries are but a couple of weeks away, and I was wondering if anyone had any comments/criticisms to share as I ready the score for juries.
It is entitled "odobenidae" and is a passicaglia for orchestra.
Dear Curtis:
Opening Passacaglia theme, nice change of pace using a 5/4 measure instead of a more traditional 3/4. In many "traditional" passacaglias start with a pickup note into the down beat of the first bar. I wonder if your theme might not benefit from such a small alteration. Given the end of your theme is simply a four beat note with a rest on beat five it would be easy to add either a quarter note or eight note pickup into the theme, I think such an addition would provide the piece with just a little more forward motion.
I wonder if your theme might be a bit more intense if you moved away from the pure natural C minor scale. Say B natural on the down beat of Bar 7? Either throwing in a bit of the C harmonic or melodic minor.
As for the 5/4 meter, great choice, but have you given much thought about the sub-division of the bar? Which are the "strong beats" is est is the bar divvied two beats + three beats? Or Three beats + two beats? Looking/listening to the opening bars I would say that you are leaning towards a 3 + 2 division of the bar. Is so I would notate every thing that way, so the last bar of your theme would be not a whole note but two half notes tied together (note i fit was a 3+ 2 division the same note would be notated by me as a dotted half note tied to a quarter note).
Problems with the orchestration, pretty much all that was said on the Sibelius music chat page with regards to your instrumentation choices echo my concerns too, so I will try not to repeat them. There are places (sorry I can not give you exact bars) where I think you have made a poor choice in the instrumentation, what I am referring to here is there are places where you have the Eb clarinet playing a phrase which is not in its "best" range id est it is playing "throat" tones, where if given to the Bb clarinet the same phrase would lie in a very sweet part of its range, and vis versus.
The 5/8 section, again 2+3 or 3+2 division of the bar.
Not sure how well the woodwinds sixteenth notes before and after Letter E really work, wonder if it might be better to rescore with the strings taken that part over. With just the full brass section playing the slower theme with out the string reinforcement you now have. Just a thought.
5/8 section, not sure the sixteenth notes in the second violin and viola work or are needed to help propel this section forward. When the Bb Clarinet takes the theme here, given the range, I think this would work better on the Eb Clarinet.
Letter H I would be tempted to score this section in 5/4 for all the instruments playing the "augmented" theme but 5/8 in the sections (strings) that are still moving at the 5/8 "pace". One way would be to put a dotted bar line dividing the 5/4 bar in half for those instruments. (see the middle section of my 59,620 Years [http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/show_score.pl?scoreid=43241] were I have the percussion playing two 11/8 bars to one 11/4 bar for the rest of the instruments for an example on how to do this.)
I would consider having EVERYONE play (softly) the last few chords.
Well those are just a few quick thoughts and ideas.
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