Symphony No. 1

Really Great Melodies and development! I salute You!

The climax at the end is a lot more satisfying then many of you think. Take a look at Rachmaninoff's First symphony, the end of the fourth mvt. is slow and almost boring listening to only parts of the climax. The climax at the end of this piece is very close tothe climax Rachy gave it. Good job!! I'll give it a 10/10.

Thanks for the kind words, and the critical ones -- I have grown a lot from this experience. As a first experiment with an orchestra, I am pleased. It was written, however, with the wrong intentions, therefor it's content is dull. I can still appreciate the colorings, as that held my attention for a bit. I am aware that the orchestration isn't very good - it was just an experiment. After all I learned quite a bit, and will keep writing sketches until I can generate a proper development of ideas.

But, I can't thank 'you' enough for listening to it, and commenting - it really does help.

Hmm.... You asked if it would be good for a performance earlier. In my own opinion: No. But, it definitely could be. The reason this piece isn't suitable for a performance at the moment is because of the way you use the instruments. What I'm saying here is that you have written parts for certain instruments here that are hard, very difficult, and almost impossible to play by a real musician. I'll explain it all right here. OK. In the beginning of the symphony everything is very good. I might say that the second violins are going a little low in their range but it isn't something to worry about. Violins can easily play were you wrote them there, but be careful and don't go any lower than that or you'll be writing out of their playable range. Your first real problem starts on measure 14. The french horns suddenly hit that high C. When the music is displayed in concert pitch that not is an F. It might not seem high then, but when you later convert the piece out of concert pitch the notes of transposing instruments change to higher and sometimes lower notes. You go much higher than this High C in your piece here. I always try to avoid going any where higher than an E in concert pitch. Your horns are far too high here. You can lower the high notes you have there down an octave and they might be fine, but take some more in depth looks into the music to see if some notes are just too plain high or low. If you don't know the ranges of the instruments you can find plenty of websites with their ranges. The other problem is the timpani. It starts in measure 17 with an upward scale from F to B flat. A timpani can't hit every note you have along with all the other you have written down in the rest of the symphony. Also consider looking at the range of the timpani and always be careful with what you write. Also make sure that the Clarinets don't go too high as well. If you fix this up, maybe make the piece shorter or keep the length and make it a little more exciting than you may be fine for a performance. Even though you have these fixable problems throughout the symphony here, I am still impressed by the length you tackled here. P.S. If you cut the time down to make it shorter it could make a good slow 2nd movement to a larger symphony. Take this into consideration freely! -Jared

You call for a strange instrumentation...five clarinets but no bass clarinet? Six flutes but one oboe? Violas I and II, 6 horns? The orchestra's instrumentation isn't extremely flexible, at least not as much as a wind band, and calling for certain unorthodox instrumentations is a guarantee of no performance - especially if you aren't a known composer (I mean stravinsky got away with needing two pianos in some orchestral works, but he's the god damn stravinsky). You can look up standard orchestral instrumentation anywhere, and I suggest you do that. Also, if you divide up a single clarinet staff (or any wind instrument, really) in to multiple instruments, mark it at the beginning as "clarinets 1-2" so whoever is putting the orchestra together knows that's how many you need.

Why does your symphony begin with a full blank measure?

You have this interesting habit of putting dynamics under crescedi/diminuendos. They go in the same horizontal space.

Someone earlier mentioned that octave leaps in the timpani are hard, this is completely untrue. Assuming the notes are on different drums there is no "difficult" interval to play. The difficult thing will be playing the ascending line you have, since it will require changing the pitch of a drum mid-phrase. This is not impossible, a skilled timpanist can change pitch easily. Your range, however, is unplayable. In general timpani parts should be kept between the D below the staff to the A on the top line, but that is a full range of four drums. Occasionally a 20" drum is available that extends the range to middle C, but notes up that high sound thin and ping-y anyway. My suggestion is to do a bit of research into unfamiliar instruments - you can even find some info on wikipedia.

Similarly, your french horn parts are astronomically high. Try not to go above that staff (written pitches) for the most part, and definitely never above written high C.

You notate some rhythms in a very unidiomatic way, as an example I'll correct m. 55 in the timpani part. You have a dotted eighth note followed by a half note followed by a sixteenth rest in a measure of 3/4. In rhythmic notation, it is important to not obscure beats - in a measure of 3/4, the division between all three beats should be clearly seen by the player. This is not to say you have to use three tied quarter notes instead of a half note, but in more complicated rhythms, you should tie over the beats. Specifically, you should notate this with a dotted eighth note, then a sixteenth note tied to a half note, or if you actually want to keep that rest (which is pointless, frankly), a sixteenth tied to a double-dotted quarter, or perhaps to be safe, a quarter tied to a dotted eighth.

I would refrain from tempo markings like "Andante" and instead give a metronome marking...both is fine too, but the important thing is a number.

I have to protest your string parts around m.133 where you notate the same notes but use "8va" and "8vb" over them to change each octave...just notate the different octaves! As a performer, my assumption upon seeing that is that you are too lazy to write different notes and used the "8va" to cut time and effort. May or may not be true, but that's what it seems like.

It looks like over-orchestration isn't a problem for you, which is great, because that is the most common symptom of beginner compositions for large ensembles.

I have literally no idea why you choose to divisi flute 1 and clarinet 2 into three parts while keeping the other flutes and clarinets resting. JUST USE THE OTHER FLUTES AND CLARINETS! Same with horns. You do understand that divisi in wind instruments necessitates additional players, right? Multiphonics being the exception.

I've made it about halfway, but I think I'm gonna stop for now. It's clear you have musical chops, but lack knowledge of instrumentation to truly put together a large-scale work like this. My suggestion is write solos for instruments, and have them played by real players, so you learn by trial and error the things which do and do not work.