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A Tribute to Mason Kistler's Wonderful Composition | A Fire Within Hi Mason ....... if this Film-Tribute, infringes on any personal copyright issues, i can have it deleted immediately. Original post : https://www.youngcomposers.com/t48884/a-fire-within-title-theme-for-my-first-short-film

alrightttttt time to respond to some of the comments @Kvothe @Wieland Handke @ComposaBoi @chopin @Luis Hernández i am very aware of the rule violation and i honestly dont care to be honest lol. ive already made peace with it. also, ive gone with the mindset of atleast i've finished a piece and not leave it unfinished like my other pieces. working on this piece was hard enough that im really proud to have enough determination to actually complete it. this is what i thought and heard as well during my researching process. i was listening to dohnanyi's sextet, which included horn, and horn could definitely project powerfully. furthermore, when executing loud dynamics, the virtual instrument that i've used aren't very capable to project strongly. i do acknowledge that. my method was to give the horn rests before and after the high register sections and make sure to only do loud dynamics. but mayyybe i might still have gone overboard with it lmao i'd love to hear more specifics about this tbh ive researched this many times and my conclusion is that it is the standard? maybe ive looked at the wrong discussions but the majority said that for chamber music, the staves besides the piano may be smaller to conserve space, which it did. but they also said that this applies to formatting for the piano part. soo i guess you could say that my score is the piano part. idk glad you hear those things that ive tried to portray! it was definitely the vision that i was trying to achieve and im satisfied you got those impressions. yesssss you noticed the whole tone scale scattered throughout! it was definitely cus of just, "water," but yes it definitely added a tone of mystery too. yes! there were fair few selections of artworks that i had to choose from, here are the two of them there shouldve been two or three drawings but i didnt download it in time before it got wiped with the middle section, i had wanted a clear contrast between the dreary beginning and ending. so i sketched up a rhythmically active theme. as it evolved (with instrumentation and other embellishments), it turned into somewhat of a "pop-y" sound - catchy, syncopated and all - and i liked how it sounded. it definitely does sound like an adventure! form: b1-b38 = intro (contains fragments of Theme 1 (T1), specifically the first three 4 notes), i imagined this to be like the entrance appearance of the ship, the sound of a creaking old wooden ship b39-b84 = full intro and repetition of T1 (the dreary and mysterious theme) b85-b101 = a whole tone scale "storm," Theme 1 is pitted against Theme 2 motif b103-b155 = full intro and 2 repetitions of T2 (the bright and catchy theme) b156-b193 = a fugue section of T2 and T1 meant as a transition b194-b232 = T1, cut and altered b233-256 = coda, contains the final climax. the "misterioso" part meant to be a call back to the intro (b249 right hand piano arpeggio figure, b250 piano left hand the "atonal" figure) with T2 motif on the horn. definitely due to the massive piano chord arpeggios and the syncopated triplets lmao i think one of my principle of writing for instruments is to squeeze and extract as much as possible out of them. i could definitely see some issues with this but in my mind, i always think of playability, even in the brink of it lol. with the stops, most of them are 6ths, 8ths, open strings, the triple stops are in 6ths with the exception of including open strings, the quadruple stops always have open strings to them, and im aware of the difficulty of executing these in faster speed, the challenging registers (high for violin, low for cello), and the possible positions with each strings. the col legno are performed at open strings as well. i am honored lol i am GLAD and SATISFIED that everyone liked the presentation of the score. i worked soooo hard on it and it is definitely satisfying to see everyone like it thank you so much for everyone that has commented so far! i will definitely try to comment the other pieces. i meant to start early with that (and i did, with 1 piece lmao) but i always struggle to put my thoughts into words as they are very scattered in my mind.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9.5 7.5 9 10 9 10 9 8 Avg: 9 What I like about this piece, is the diversity of emotions and techniques. And in my opinion, your ending is the strongest part of the piece. But there are many good techniques you use here, so let's go through some of them that I've observed. First is your ability to create anticipation by using certain themes with instruments. You don't rush through your music which is something I admit I even have a hard time with. For example, you understand the usage of rests to help build tension and clarity. This is really important in all types of writing, not just music. The body of your piece has a clear theme / melody, but leading to that melody is what is even more impressive to me. You have a non standard first 1/3, but clearly lead to a more structured body. And as a result, this makes your music creative, but also very easy to follow. And now to the strongest part which is your ending. You flip the harmony and mood completely here. What makes this section so memorable, is the fact that most of the piece is pretty tame. So your ending becomes so unexpected, but it also gives the listener quite the shock. Very well done.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9 8.5 10 10 8.5 9 8.5 Avg: 9.1 The intro is awesome! I love how you start this out, as chaotic, but structured chaos. I observed some instances of the whole tone scale towards the beginning, which I feel adds to the mystery of the voyage. It's clear from the music that you intended this to be a chaotic voyage, with the instances of adventure and reprieve. Fun motive towards the first third / or middle section of the piece. Very swing-like here, and I definitely get a sense of exploration and adventure around this section. Then you change it up the last 3rd (beautiful usage of a rest, creating anticipation, or a scene change), followed up with instances of mystery, calm and some chaos. For some reason I get a bit of a Rachmaninoff vibe here. Very jazzy ending, and yes as I listen to the ending right now, I definitely hear a tiny bit of Rach influence...this is pretty awesome! There was a lot of musical content here, definitely one of the more complex pieces in this competition. Either way, complex or not, this is an extremely creative piece. Your intro was killer, your middle section introduced the fun swing-like motive, the last third was enjoyable and quite melodramatic. Awesome use of the whole tone scale; you didn't overdo it, but used it just enough to add some fun mystery to this voyage. Well done!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 8 10 8 10 10 9.5 9 Avg: 9 This is such a beautiful piece. Even though it's not your best work (your words), I feel like the simplicity of this style is what makes it so powerful. Yes, it may be simple, but I feel like the technique is not so simple. And the emotions you were able to invoke were very real. Honestly, isn't that the point of music? The harmony also has extreme focus and purpose. I love towards the end when you just flip the key completely; such a powerful key change moment. The ending is also very nice, with the imperfect cadence. The balance of your instruments are done very well, and not overwhelming at all. This is important, you clearly know how to use the instruments to the song's advantage. Your techniques are fun, the cello knows just the right moment to chime in, the violins have a purpose and the piano does its role in supporting the harmony.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 8.5 7 9 9 10 8.5 8 Avg: 8.6 Once the flute came in, things started to really pick up. I love your theme, and it was quite easy to spot about a minute in. I had to listen to this a few times to understand the structure, but I realized that this piece has a few motives here. But this is not clear until after a full minute into the piece. The things I love about this piece is your harmony, key changing, the flute, the use of the pentatonic scale.

@ComposaBoi You are more than welcome. I try my best to fair and honest when I score entries. And i try to give helpful feedback with them.

Melodies Themes Motives: The piece is full of motifs that reflect the various impressions experienced during voyage of the ship. Most of them not in the manner of a melody but rather to create the respective impression: the waves, the storm, and the loneliness of a quiet night. However, there are also some melodic lines that turn the whole thing into “music” and not not only an agglomeration of imitated “sounds.” Well done! Harmony Chords Textures: The harmonic style is—though surprising at first—very varied: dramatic, atonal passages shift directly to more tonal, calm ones and are then interspersed with jazzy sections—which I really liked. One can literally imagine the different situations of the ship’s voyage: storm and heavy waves – and then again the calm, open sea or a lonely starry night. Form Development Structure Time: The composition does not follow any specific traditional form, which is perfectly acceptable for a piece intended to depict certain images, tell a story, or even serve as film music. Unfortunately, the playing time of more than 9 minutes exceeds the limits requested by the contest’s prerequisites. Originality Creativity: There is a lot of creativity! First, your attempt to get the inspiration from a prompt given random people with the task to draw the picture. How many attempts did you need? Or did you go with the first one? Since the result was unpredictable, you had to take up a scenario you perhaps did not think on and translate it to the music! And there is also lot creativity in the music itself. The instrumentation and the contrast between the more dramatic and the playful, jazz-like sections! Score Presentation: The score, while being dense due to the many “virtuoso” passages that need to be engraved, is clear and readable. Perhaps you have decided for the smaller font on the other instruments than the piano to achieve that more staves would fit on a single page. Instrumentation Orchestration Playability: The instrumentation is very interesting: With the piano as the foundation and providing the more rhythmic and percussive base, the strings consisting of a cello and violin—thus offering a large ambitus—and the horn and timpani serving as festive and signaling elements, you have a variety of sounds at your disposal to create a piece with different colors. As for playability, I think it would be at least “challenging” and would require a certain degree of virtuosity if performed by human musicians. Execution of Given Challenge: You have clearly mastered the challenge of the contest with excellence! But – and that hurts me to say – not met the rules of the competition. As you stated yourself that you „might’ve gone overboard with the duration“, you are aware of that rule violation. And I can truly understand that, when being in a „flow“ composing, it is sometimes hard to come to the end if there are a number of ideas which have to been expressed. Concerning the huge amount of effort you must have spent to achieve that final result, you’re tempting me to break the rules as well by giving you a score that takes all (other) criteria into account and doesn’t skip your piece due to disqualification. Taste: Even if that genre (let me call it „soundtrack“ or „movie score“) is not my favorite one, I really like it due to it creative ideas and colorfulness. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 10 5 10 8.5 9.5 10 9 Average Score: 9.0

First of all, congratulations on meeting the submission deadline. This competition was a real challenge, and despite the two-month timeframe, only half of the participants who originally planned to submit a composition actually finished their work! Melodies Themes Motives and Harmony Chords Textures: There is a distinctive motif introduced by the English horn in measures 3–4 that runs through the entire piece in various variations. Other motifs serve to create a kind of counterpoint in the “rich” sections of the string accompaniment, while other homophonic and rhythmic passages feature an interplay between “pizzicato” and “arco,” resulting in a varied texture. The harmonies are „friendly“ and I like that there is sometimes some „spice“ with dissonances. Form Development Structure Time: Even though I can’t identify any specific traditional form, such as ABA or rondo, the piece is nonetheless structured into, shall we say, “episodes,” which makes it more distinctive than other submissions that consist of an “endless” flow of motivic material. Originality Creativity: It was creative, not only to portrait a landscape as a „still life“ but telling a little story, the „lamento of the shepherd which lost (hopefully only one of) his sheep“. Especially the „coda“ (from mm. 89 on) reminds me of this lamento – while, fortunately, not in a deeply sad way, but in a somewhat humorous one! Score Presentation: The score is clean and easy to read. Instrumentation Orchestration Playability: The choice of using a string quartet as accompaniment and the English horn as the solo instrument gives the piece a rich, pastorale mood. I think, there are no playability issues. Execution of Given Challenge: The challenge of depicting a landscape and thus creating an image in the listener’s mind’s eye has been met with great success. Moreover, you successfully avoided the risk of creating an endlessly meandering flow of sounds by using simple but memorable motifs and a variety in the texture. Taste: I very enjoyed it with its calm and, at some passages, humorous character. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9 8.5 9 9 9 9 8 Average Score: 8.8125

With pleasure!

Hi!! Thank you for taking your time to analyse this! Its true, maybe a thats a bit fast, i could play It at 45-50 bit no 60, ill check that, as for the chords: i wanted to give It a first-ravelian//percussive sonorite, thats why I used extended chords in closed dispositions! Thank you for your feedback!!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 10 10 10 10 7 8 10 Disqualified due to being too long, but otherwise Average is 9.4 Congratulations! You got the highest score from me. I scored everyone else quite low. My only issue was the horn was sometimes a little high, and although each instrument is generally well written for, the ensemble would be a little imbalanced if performed live I think. But besides that, it was great. It's a shame it's too long! Thanks for sharing, it was a very enjoyable listen!

Maybe you could share something by him?

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 6 8 4 9 9 8 4 Average 6.9 Not poorly written per se, but I really just don't like this style. It's sentimental, but like in a shallow way. Thank you for sharing!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 7 5 6 8 10 9 8 Average 7.5 Overall a well written piece. The main issue was the structure felt meandering and didn't have much direction to me. The string chords and arco/pizz changes are completely fine, so I gave you a ten there to counter-balance those who said it wasn't good instrument writing lol. Overall, good job!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 9 8 10 10 9 7 7 Average 8.5 This was really well written piece and the score is beautiful. And I say this despite it not quite being to my taste. Your talent is very much recognized and appreciated

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 4 4 4 2 6 3 2 GoT Disqualified because string orchestra is not a 5 instrument ensemble. Otherwise average is 3.6 A sunset isn't a landscape, and the piece didn't really convey a sunset to me anyway. Sounded just like Game of Thrones. As a constructive note, Violas have only four strings and can't play a sextuple stop.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 2 4 1 3 5 N/A 0 1 Disqualified, but otherwise average is 2.3 It really doesn't do what it's trying to very effectively. Nothing fugal about it.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 1 1 1 2 0 1 0 1 Average 0.9 Sorry, this just wasn't really anything. Sounds like you pressed random notes on a midi keyboard and not much more.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 7 5 3 6 7 8 9 Average 7.4 Brought me back to old fantasy games! But overall, not much going on, and because it just kinda sounded like old fantasy game soundtrack, I wouldn't say it's particularly original. But I liked the nostalgic trip, so thanks for that

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste N/A 7.5 8 9 1 5.5 7.5 7 Average 6.5 The piece was pretty fun, fairly simple too, and it sounds like good percussion music, but it seems like you maybe are more familiar with large percussion sections in bands rather than percussion ensembles, because I would NEVER write out so many staves for a single percussionist. And the amount of instruments each player has would be a pain to set up effectively in a concert hall. But again, the piece was enjoyable to listen to, and the idea of only percussion is fairly unique compared with other submissions

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste N/A 9 4 8 8 10 8 8 Average 7.9 Good sound, very good string writing! I suspect you play a string instrument? Overall nice quality and conveyed the landscape well, but structurally, nothing really happened. There was no direction except the beginning really. Kind of meandered. Overall though, I enjoyed the piece

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 8 5.5 1 7 10 8.5 6 Average 6.6 Not much going on motivically (not a bad thing) but the few that are present work well for the style, and I quite enjoy renaissance harmony. But I can't say it's original at all. Sounds like any other renaissance brass piece. The score is ok, be sure to put fermatas in all voices at the end. Not very well versed in the instrumentation, so I'll assume it's perfect, and the style and instrumentation certainly evokes the landscape. Good job overall.

No Jeremy Soule yet? 😬