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Old Mar 14 2008, 11:01 PM
Gardener Gardener is offline

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Very beautiful and sweet! I really liked listening to that.

Just some minor instrument-technical things I noticed by glancing through the score:

Bars 62/63: I'm not totally sure how you imagined the glissandi to and from a harmonic. This very high b in the first violin could be played as a harmonic with a stopped fourth, so you could play that first glissando in bar 62 on the A string and then just keep your finger pressed for that lower b and touch the e above it, to create that high b, but that won't create a glissando of course. And the lower b in the second violin in bar 63 is simply impossible as a harmonic. (Unless you're working with some crazy scordatura I guess )

You have a couple more of such impossible harmonics, such as on the last page: The f (which appears twice) and eb in the second group of first violins. I'm not a string player though, so I simply might miss a possibility that exists.

It might generally also be good to write harmonics that aren't natural with how you should actually stop them. I.e. a note for the stopped tone and a diamond shape notehead where your finger should touch the string.

Something I noticed with the harp is in bar 4, the ebb. Since the three positions of the eb string of a harp are eb, e, and e#, an ebb can't be played, so usually you'd use a d. But of course you didn't use a d because you need that d tuned to db. So I'd recommend tuning the c to c# and replacing the db in that bar with a c#, so you can write d instead ebb in that chord. Writing for harp is a real pain though, I know.
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