Cathedral (I wrote this for my school orchestra!)

Hi! This is my first attempt at composing so there's a lot of stuff in it that could be improved upon. I get to conduct this at my school's spring concert and I'm still not sure on tempos (Sibelius won't change tempos so I can't hear playback,) so any ideas on that would be nice, as well as any small changes. This is my last hurrah in high school so I want it to go well. I personally think it sounds like it could be a suite of themes from a film, hence I posted it here. I hope you enjoy it!

Note: Kindly disregard the Glockenspiel solo at the end, for some reason Sibelius' playback plays it out of tune, but the notes are written down right, I've double-checked.

I do like the fact that there is a strong central motif. It is quite simple, which isn't necessarily bad, and it sounds very nice, but the interest of the wind players and string players might be stretched. Some of the instrument voice leading is a little off, but in such a film music setting, this isn't too much of a problem. Yes, it is quite nice, despite its difficulty/rythmic interest.

Good work!

You gotta start somewhere! I know it's really boring for people to play, but my composing skills don't take me much further than putting chords together. Rhythm is something I need to work on as well as orchestration (as you can see, the winds and brass play mainly when I want it to be loud, everything else is strings, but, hey, what more can you expect from a string player?)

Intro's very nice. The only thing I dislike is the marimba part. It's overkill to have all those rolls. Maybe change that to a single hit, or remove it entirely?

Nice chorale writing following that.

At C it's very nice, but the melody's getting a bit repetitive. Variation in harmony scoring will fix that.

At D I don't really care for your string writing. It's too much like hanon for the piano.

I LOVE the flute/oboe duet at E except for a few things. Keep your unisons to a minimum, first of all. The support of the oboe is a bit weak in unison with a flute. I'm posting a graphic of a harmony I liked, but feel free to edit ^_^



I would work on the harmony in the following section at F too. It's a bit boring.

At G the marimba is annoying me. You need steady support, not jiggling rolls :p

All in all very good for a first piece though congratulations

What school are you performing this at? I'll come if it's nearby I'm from michigan too.

Thank you for the advice. In defense of the marimba part, on the computer with midi it drives me insane too, however, when its preformed it sounds like voices, not really a marimba. This only occurs with tremelo, and you need a really talented marimba player pull it off (which we have at our school.) This was actually my music teacher's suggestion. I didn't like it until it was actually preformed. When it's recorded i'll post it so you can hear what it really sounds like.

You're right about the melody getting repetitive. Sadly, it's too late for me to go back and make changes. It's going to be preformed next Weds. and I only have two days left with the orchestra (meaning I can't make any more major changes.)

About D, what is "hanon"?

I'm excited to see what you did to E. Unfortunately my sister is hogging the computer at this moment and the midi keyboard only works with that computer.

Yeah, the harmony at F was a little boring; it's another thing I would go back and change if I could.

I wish I could tell you what school I go to, but I'm uncomfortable giving away my location on the web. Paranoid, I know. It's nothing against you, I just try to make it a general rule for myself to follow.

Thank you again for critiquing it; it looks like you went really in depth!

haha, hanon -> those really boring excercises you start on your first piano lesson that are the same pattern for 3 octaves, both hands. Here's the first one :p

Hmm, personally I find unisons of oboes and flutes quite lovely. The oboe gives the sound a core which is embedded in the "aura" of the flute. Unisons between different instruments with very different timbres can be problematic at times (for example combining double basses with trombones), but often you can achieve wonderful results. (Just think of the wonderful solo with horn and solo violin in octaves in the second movement of Brahms' first symphony!)