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I have already uploaded March and April from my Spring Trilogy, here is the finale, May. Since this month is traditionally rainy in Slovenia, the beginning has some features of rain with various aleatoric timbre playing on orchestra, while cello brings the initial melodic motif with its various transformations. Music becomes more "down to earth", more energetic and passionate. It continues to bounce between these two contrasting characters and ends with cellist playing improvised harmonics of a basic tone of c with unisono violins and violas while lower strings play some low ranged aleatoric pizzicatos.

Did you ever have any music theory lessons? How old are you? I started by improvising on the piano and then writing down these improvisations. During my intermediate school studies I was intensely studying harmony and counterpoint from 16th to 19th century theory. I learned the use of instruments by arranging numerous popular pieces - I had a band with a flute, clarinet, violin, trumpet and trombone players. They were not advanced players but sufficient enough to learn how to late compose for these instruments. If I were young today, I would recommend anybody to start with arrangements and harmonizations of folk pieces or children pieces. Initially to use basic functions of tonality (tonic, subdominant, dominant, followed by supportive functions of IInd, IIIrd and VIth chord of the key, and then beginning to venture outside the single key).

Just begin composing. Don't wait to "feel ready" 🙂 You can start for free using Musescore and read scores (highly recomended) on imslp a long with youtube for audio. Start learning how to read scores with some basic music theory. find a teacher or teach your self. Then post the scores here on the forum for feedback. That a lone can take you far with some patience. Just focus on small improvements constantly every day! Good luck! 🙂

Hello beautiful souls, firstly I want to tell you I love listening to music. When I listen to a piece of music, I wonder what the inspiration of the composer behind it is. I want to know if all this talent is god gifted or we make it with practice. I want to pursue music composition as my new hobby, can you please guide me through how I can start? It’s not like that I know nothing about music as I used to play guitar and piano in my college days but I’m not remember that much now and yes please consider me as a complete beginner. Thank you.

Composition Competition Regulations (Currency: KRW) General Regulations Throughout its festival and competition history, Busan Choral has fostered cultural exchange and promoted high quality of choral music by attracting notable artists, conductors, and composers to one of Asia’s top choral festivals. The Busan Choral Composition Competition seeks to engage with aspiring young composers and to encourage the creation and performance of new works written for the choral music genre. The 1st winning work will be premiered at the 2026 Busan Choral Festival & Competition during the week of October 22- October 25th, 2026. Eligibility 1) Composer must be born between MAY 31, 2006 and MAY 31, 1986. (exceptions may be considered under the BCFC committee's review.) 2) Compositions must not have been previously published or awarded in previous composition competitions and never publicly performed. Length and Format 1) 3-10 minutes in duration 2) Piece must be for unaccompanied, equal or mixed voices choir. 3) Smaller, portable percussion instruments are allowed. (Xylophone, vibraphone and timpani not allowed). 4) Text can be chosen from Latin, English or Korean. If another language is chosen, a detailed English synopsis and pronunciation must be included in the score. Application (May 31, 2026 Deadline / Korea Standard Time) 1) Complete Online Application Form (http://www.busanchoral.org/bcfc/competition/c_apply.asp) 2) Résumé/CV (*.doc / *.docx) 3) Copy of passport or ID Card with date of birth in JPEG format 4) Score in PDF format 5) English synopsis and pronunciation 6) Midi recording (by computer software) in MP3 format 7) 3 original copies of the score mailed to the Busan Choral office by May 31, 2026 (postmark deadline). Submitted original copies of scores will be used only for judging so there MUST be No Personal Information Included on the score for a fair evaluation. Scores submitted to the Busan Choral office will not be returned (Address: Busan Choral Festival & Competition / 82, Bosu-daero, Jung-gu, Busan, Republic of Korea, 48973). 😎 Only one piece per person acceptable Application Fee 1) Free Results 1) Winners will be announced on July 20, 2026 on BCFC Website. 2) Composition will be judged by a panel of international jury. The jury's decisions are final and cannot be appealed. Awards 1) First Prize: ￦3,000,000 *Only the top prize winning work will be premiered at the 2026 BCFC in the week of October 22- October 25th, 2026. 2) Second Prize: ￦2,000,000 3) Third Prize: ￦1,000,000 Publication and Rights 1) Busan Choral Festival & Competition and the Korea Choral Institute will hold publication rights of the score. Busan Choral Festival & Competition will hold performance and recording rights for up to two years following the results of the competition. This will be negotiated between Busan Choral and the composer. 2) Copyright will be retained by the composer . 3) The winning work cannot be submitted for future composition competitions. Deadline 1) Online Application: By May 31, 2026 2) Result Announcement: On July 20, 2026

HI @PeterthePapercomPoser I can tell you are enjoying these exercises! I love how you use the harmonic and melodic motives that he presented thorough out the entire piece. I think we need to have something like this for YC challenge. 🙂

Thanks! It's a bit of a lighter finale, like that of the Hummel trumpet concerto or of some Beethoven concerti, which I thought was needed after the long and serious adagio.

Take an already orchestrated piece of game music, and oldify it!

Kirby's Epic Yarn - Weird Woods

Kirby Super Star OST - Trees in the Depths of the Earth

Very enjoyable finale! I like how you let up tension, but tension is still there; you don't let up. Does that make sense? Probably not, but this would have rocked Vienna in the 1790s.

Agreed. Very nice point. I think we should be real about this. We can't just do everything at once. False assumptions are not ideal, are they? See you guys later. Bye. (I feel like I just broke my hand after practicing a few hours Mozart Piano Concerto 12 in A Major and need to recover too, btw.)

Overrated: Mahler, Brahms, Tchaikovsky (although I love his music most of these selected composers), Puccini and Chopin (I cannot stand his piano music anymore, sorry). From modern era, I would also mention John Cage (he is an inventor, not a composer), Pierre Boulez (terrible attitude) and Gyorgy Kurtag (very poor composing skills, sorry) Underrated: Henk Badings (fantastic Dutch orchestral composer, many of his symphonies are excellent), Uroš Krek (one of the finest Slovene composers), Eugen Suchon (excellent Slovakian composer of operas and instrumental music), Witold Lutosławski (what a great combination of impressionism and modernism, especially in his works from 1970 onwards!) and Nikos Skalkottas (Bartok from Greece)

Wow, a lot to digest... About bar 16. I guess I was sloppy not to add crescendo to basses. About mixing sharps with flats: I prefer diatonic intervals to diminished even if the vertical structure looks strange, I guess for practical reasons (for example, this always happens when harp is used). Beam over rests: from my experience, it depends what type of metre is used. I try to properly control the beaming but sometimes it looks a bit rough. Still, we are used to such notation at the ear and rhythm training sessions. 🙂 I usually don't add extra bowings, unless I am 100% in necessity for the specific articulation. Maybe I am a bit more aware of the bowing since I have a daughter who plays double bass. 🙂 Anyway, thanks for the comment. You really pointed out specific situations which made me take some extra peeks in the score. 🙂

Anything I say isn't gonna be very useful, since you've clearly gotten a performance of it, so it's obviously “good enough,” but I'll throw some stuff out. What an interesting piece, here. It has some very Barber cello concerto-esque vibes, mixed with almost a little bit of Meyer's violin concerto? I love the harmonic language you used throughout and it's very refreshing to see some good string writing. I really liked the transition back to the opening material: I love cascade effects because I'm a normie, but it's used really well here to bring us back to the original register too, which is clever. I think the only real musical note I have is just wanting to hear a little more textural variation. Like, I think the upper strings are homophonic with each other essentially the whole time, which is admittedly a nice split from the full homophony of the intro/ending material, but it feels like—especially at big moments—there could have been some more counterpoint. I have a few score nitpicks, like sometimes your markings that feel like they should apply to the whole group aren't done so (e.g., cresc. in bass in m. 16, mp for cello in m. 17). Bass note spacing issue in m. 73, etc. I was very surprised to see you mix flats and sharps in m. 77, especially when the cello acquiesces to the B major in the orchestra by the end of the measure, but I understand wanting to make the contour clearer in the solo instrument. Have you considered using beam over rests? I'm sure you have; it's just some of the rhythms starting in m. 58 are (despite being totally fine with practice) kinda rough to look at on first glance, and you're at the disadvantage of doing it with 16ths and not 8ths as is normal for that kind of texture. m. 62, in my mind, clef changes are applied only to the note and not any rests; I'm sure it makes spacing look better having the clef change in the solo be just at the beginning but it made me do a double take. And I'm just selfish, but I'd have loved to see some bowings (🙂), just for that little extra professionalism pop, haha. Great work and very enjoyable to listen to!!

Maybe you could start from C major then try and switch from C major to G major to add some more texture to the music from time to time

This is my second piece from the Spring Trilogy, April. It is the most easy-going of the cycle. It begins as a gentle waltz but it gets more energetic and drammatic. After a short recapitulation the piece ends surprisingly in dark contrast between bright pizzicatos and low, murky tremolos of the cello.

That does make sense now you say that. I'll try to use better modulation next time!

The first question, that came to my mind is: are the piccolo players you know skilled in circular breathing? If not, the beginning should be revised, no piccolo player can play these high a's without breathing and hence breaking the obvious attempt to maintain the pitch uninterrupted. I personally believe this is more appropriate to be the movement of a Suite, rather than a Symphony. The piece needs some modulations to other tonalities. The varied use of orchestration and dynamics help this music a lot, but there is no real climax or waypoint towards a certain progression of the musical material. You are relatively new in the field of composition. I remember my beginnings, and this is more ambitious than mine were though.

Most of my music from 1995 to 1996 in worthless, I had very limited skills in motivic development, harmony progression and formal approach. So therefore I consider my studies at the Academy to fully improve all these skills, plus knowledge of all instruments, orchestration, contrasts, fresh expansions of tonal colour and timbres. You don't seem to show any interest in developing yourself into a more wider and skilled composer. These "Sententiae" are always, always the same. For decades. Just notes, no dynamic marks, no articulation, no formal development, nothing attractive for performers. But I guess I am consistently hiting a brick wall by talking about your opus.

As composers, we never really know why we compose. If we knew it , we might never have become composers. I DO know why I became composer. It is the passion and the will to speak positively to your audiences and, if necessary, criticize the negativity or simply enjoy the widest range of possibilities of art. It is also about exploring and sharing your talents with everybody. The Bible also says the talents should never be burried. And you should always try to improve your skills and explore the little explored and be open-minded.

Let me revive this old and interesting thread I had started many years ago, and also take this opportunity to encourage newer members to add their own compositional wisdom in the form of maxims, as well as discuss each other’s maxims. Here is a new maxim that I thought of a few hours ago today: As composers, we never really know why we compose. If we knew it , we might never have become composers.

No composer composes thinking their music is worthless! They all do so thinking that they have something valuable to say. That includes you and me. Of course I appreciate the music of all the masters that you mentioned, and also that of Bach and Handel, Haydn, Schubert, Cherubini, Brahms, Khachaturian, and many others (including living composers). But all those composers do not negate me as a composer; or comparison with them does not devalue me as a composer. They do not replace me or make me irrelevant, redundant or useless. They are not me! So however great and genius their music is, it can never fully express my mind, my thoughts and my feelings. I compose what I am inspired to compose and what I have to express inside myself. I do not have to imitate them or to devalue myself just because they were and are great! And I evolve as a composer at my own pace, even though you might not notice it, just as they did at their own pace.

A professional composer should be opened to various styles and genres. Although I am primarly a contemporary classical music composer I also write popular pieces, simple music for church services, also jazz. But I always try to maintain high professional standards, even in simple works.

During my studies I sometimes did the sketches but with the experience comes the inner ear skill. Today I can hear the orchestra before I even write notes down. I guess I would be able to be deaf like Beethoven and compose further, trusting my inner ear.