[quote=Berlioz;254104]I've had the themes for this in my head for a year now, playing it on the piano, and only a week ago did I decide to start writing it down for orchestra.
I composed this in four sessions of 10 hours each (from 2 PM to midnight), practically non-stop. It grew up to 15 minutes of music.
The piece is what the title says, a funeral march. It's meant to contrast feelings of deep, savage grief with heavenly utopias that are constantly brought down to harsh reality and exaggerated pain.
There's a brief moment of insanity near the end, maybe a little moment in which one might be deluded by one's own imagination.
The only justification I can give for the weird sound/orchestration at some points is that it's as close as I could get from what I wanted to hear. Not a valid point, but there you go.
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Hi. I liked it. There are things about writing for orchestra you are probably aware of - or not, I wouldn't know - which could make this piece better (I think there's a little too much low grumbling in the brass writing, the whole triplets passage for bassoon... it did say "high", but that's an understatement
. Do you actually do any preliminary work such as sketching, shorthand/condensed scoring, before scoring? Or do you jump right into the full score? It's always wise to have some kind of plan, some way to see or envision the project before you write down "all the notes". One thing is having specific sounds and timbres in your mind appearing at the same time with a melody or an harmony, but, with a little patience, you should also sit down and examine the choices you actually have when scoring for big orchestra. You'll be surprised how common it is to find BETTER solutions - more practical, less hard on the players, same effects with less effort, etc. - once you hold on to your horses! Enthusiasm and inspiration can be good to jot down the main ideas first, even from beginning to end, but for effective and creative scoring, you need time to think. It's also SOOO tempting to fall for orchestral colors while forgetting about form, consistency, melodic and harmonic beauty AND SENSE. Sometimes, while sitting in a movie theater, all I can think of is "this music is really crappy, but the orchestrator did a great job dressing it up" - and sometimes, not even that:-)
It's not your case.
But if your March can be played on a piano from start to finish - with the necessary adjustments and limitation of the instrument - and still "make sense", hold together, then you've got some good music to "dress up" and make even more effective by using a symphonic orchestra. Don't fall for what Berlioz - your idol, I guess - and some "modern composers" could be sometimes held accountable for (clever orchestral sounds for their own sake, but no substance, no "core").