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The competition is now closed, so vote for your favorites here:

Very beautiful, dreamy music. I love the tension between the clean and consonant passages and the dissonant ones, whereas those dissonances are never scary or threatening, they only darken the calm and peaceful character a little. However, since being a beautiful piece of music, it reminds me more of a starry summer night with gold dust falling from the sky and elves playing around than on a misty, windy October evening with sinister creatures. Will say, therefore it does not so perfectly match the objective of the contest to find the "Spookiest/Scariest piece". Nevertheless, the instrumentation with the pizzicato and pearl-like thirds runs on the piano as well as with the pedalling and the reverb perfectly produce the desired mood. One of my absolute favorites! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9 9 9 9 9 6 8 Average Score: 8.5

For me this is a piece with a lot of ideas and potential. The Halloween style is to be achieved by, on the one hand, atonality, and otherwise, through the color of the different articulations which can be performed by string instruments, for example the application of „col legno“. However a lot of that potential has not been risen yet, and small improvements sometimes work wonders. For example, applying dynamics and agogics: I for myself have experienced, that the dynamics and tempo marks one usually applies in the score gives only an overview about the larger development in the sections. However if a human being will play a phrase, there are a lot of „microdynamics“ and „microagogics“ which are applied naturally in order to phrase. I don’t know what notation software you use and which capabilities it provides (I’m using lilypond), but I’m giving nearly every single note its own dynamic hint and even change the tempo slightly nearly any bar to get the sound more realistic. The end is a bit surprising - not to say that it feels to be unfinished at all (that impression corresponds with the fact that its only 02:17 minutes long and, thus, not reaches the minimum of 3 minutes). Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 7 4 7.5 5.5 8 7.5 6.5 Average Score: 6.625

Taken into account how much work you invested to achieve such a piece (including the thorough examination of the backgrounds and myths of Aos Si - as you explain in your introduction), you should earn a 10. However, I must agree with the comments by @MK_Piano and @Omicronrg9 in that way, that it’s not easy to remember the piece pushing me to listen to it again and again. „Post-tonal“ works are not worse than more traditional ones, but due to the lack of tonality, the texture and the overall structure of the piece are crucial in allowing the audience to follow the piece and imagine a picture or story in their minds. Maybe your story – while perfectly matching the subject of the Halloween competition – is too diffuse or too complicated to create clear synapses with unambiguous „landmarks“ of the piece (the only „landmark“ I remember was the Bach-quotation). Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 6.5 4 10 8.5 7 6.5 6.5 Average Score: 7.125

Firstly, the idea behind the piece is very original and was not used by any other participant - variations about a theme. And then there is the instrumentation for two pianos and (only) one violin! Concerning the Halloween vibes, they are perceivable at the one parts (for example in the opening part and especially in the variations 1, 5 and 9), whereas other parts have a more playful, bright character (for example, the picardy third, lol) – which is perfectly fine, giving the piece variety. Due to the idea based on a memorable theme, you can introduce the different textures throughout the variations giving the piece a clear structure. However, because of the inherent recapitulation in the variations, the texture and harmonies become sometimes too repetitive, for example when using unisono between the two pianos or repeating the same accompaniment over a dozen of bars. As mentioned before in the thread, there are a number of issues with the playability (for example the chords to be played by one violin in mm. 32-39), so that the score cannot be rated as „ready for performance“. Nevertheless, a piece I enjoyed. Thanks for sharing. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8.5 7 8 9.5 6.5 4.5 7 8 Average Score: 7.375

A woodwind quintet is a good choice for the subject of the contest, Halloween. And, as of many of the participants do, we have a piece with a lot of atonality, which also fits the contest’s intent. However, in my opinion, the piece is a bit to long and to slow (where the latter one implies the former). I would love, if there were more contrast in tempo between the sections, as it was to some extent in bar 58. Concerning the score, there are too much spaces around (starting on page 2) and on pages 6, 7 and 13 there is only one system on the page. Even if only a question of aesthetics, I think musicians would hesitate to play from that score only due to that first visual impression. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 6 5.5 7 4.5 7 7 5 Average Score: 6.125

The piece has a distinct theme or motif that makes it easy to the listener to remember to it. However, in my opinion, it is a bit to repetitive and could be developed more. It has a kind of darkness, especially expressed by the pizzicatos, and one can imagine dancing clowns, however the imagination of „killer clowns“ seems a be too martially to me. The score has much too much whitespace around, so that the notes are unnecessarily small. Even if this might only be a question of aesthetics, I think musicians appreciate a good readability in case of performing. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6.5 5.5 6 6.5 4 8 6.5 6 Average Score: 6.125

Listening to your piece with your intention in mind - to reflect the surreal impressions of candle smoke on paper -, that objective has been perfectly matched. And that mood also fits the atmosphere on a foggy Halloween evening. However, that „pro“ is also its „con“, since the intentional randomness of the motives, it is hard for the listener to follow the piece, since its texture is diffuse, vague and fluid. The pick of the woodwind trio is a good choice (if I would imagine a string trio instead, it would be – in my opinion – boring). The melodies – even if not intended to build functional harmonies – blend well together, sometimes creating a taste of atonality. Even it is a long piece, and therefore it is hard to pay attention on it all if you here it for the first time, it is real worth listening more than once - and I must admit, the more I have listened to it, the more I like it. Thanks for sharing! Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7.5 6.5 6.5 8.5 9 7 6 7 Average Score: 7.25

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6.5 4.5 7 8 N/A (don't count this metric) 7 10 6.5 Intro is very cool, and the melody created by the organ is definitely fun! The issue is that the piece is very repetitive, and your one key change at around 2:00, feels too forced without any smooth modulation to that key. There are of course times in music that this can work, but because the harmony rarely changes, we needed a bit of this forward momentum. Think about this, if you are in one key, and you simply transpose it up a half step without modulating through other keys, you are still basically in the same harmony. This is why I like when you break up the piece with the solo vibraphone, because something needed to break the monotony. But you did a good job at getting the vibe of Halloween. After all, this is a Halloween competition! And you know what, getting mood right is not an easy thing to do. Also, you have a good melody, it's a little hard to pick out because of the very robotic midi render. Melody and Harmony: Fun melody but the harmony needs to be a little more varied. This will help break up the monotony. Form and Creativity: Pretty creative! The form seems easy to follow enough. Score: Basically, N/A, we won't count this metric. Playability: I'm sure it's playable. The midi render makes it hard for me to judge this because of the lack of musicality in the audio. Execution of Challenge: You nailed it! Taste: Fun piece, but a bit on the repetitive side. Great melody, but buried in poor midi render. Melody could easily be enhanced with better / more varied harmony.

Entry: Submission by @Cosmia Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 5 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 Average Score: 9.38 Review: Another wonderful performance/recording submitted to our competition! And another entry steeped in extended techniques - ones that are especially well utilized towards evoking the unnerving and spine-chilling sounds of perhaps a cellar, basement, attic or just a haunted mansion. The use of knocking on the body of the instrument is a really nice touch, as well as the arpeggiated natural harmonics and sul ponticello. Also, in this case, even though this piece was not written for this specific competition, it fits the Halloween theme so well that I feel inclined to look past that. And like you said in your description, this piece does in fact induce a quiet kind of terror in the listener - the kinds of things that in a horror movie would prepare for a jump-scare really well. My favorite parts are probably m. 28 - 29. The creepy descending figure in the Violin at m. 41 is also really great. Great job and thanks for participating!

Entry: Daunting Steps - Quintet for Piano, Flute, Contrabassoon, Violin and Cello - 2025 Halloween Submission by @ferrum.wav 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 10 10 10 Average Score: 10.00 Review: You’re right - your description of this piece being much more lighthearted is an accurate one. It is a playful kind of spooky fun! And the piece coheres well and has very recognizable themes that are well developed and repeated to create a very lucid listening experience. It is sort of dance like too - very much akin to a Siciliana with its dotted 8th note, 16th note, 8th note rhythms. It also seems like a kind of variations fantasy which you’re very well known for composing. There is a great balance of both unity and variety because of this and the piece cements its themes very well into this listeners mind. The ending is quite succinct but effective! It’s actually kind of capricious! Very cute. Another entry that I simply enjoyed listening to over and over. The score is well engraved although I would have displayed some things a bit differently to, in my opinion, “beautify” it. Such as for example some places where you use 16th notes followed by 16th note rests - I would have simply used an 8th note with staccato. But I won’t count you down for such a tiny nitpick. As already mentioned it also fits the Halloween theme quite well. It is perhaps similar in style to Saint-Seans’ “Danse Macabre”. You also used the instrumentation to your full advantage making great use of the contrabassoon. Really can’t say enough good things about this piece! Congratulations!

Entry: Dima’s National Dance - 2025 Halloween Submission by @Dima Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 5 9 9 7 10 5 7 Average Score: 7.38 Review: First off - congratulations on getting a decent performance/recording of such a demanding piece! For that, your Playability category is automatically 10 despite its difficulty. As far as this piece being appropriate for the Halloween theme, I don’t think it met the mark. It definitely sounds like folk music, perhaps inspired by the style of Bartok. But, it doesn’t sound creepy, scary, strange, nor thrilling. The most salient feature of the composition is the cluster chords and the almost (if not completely) atonal approach to harmony (and perhaps a modal approach to melody). I don’t think you really wrote this piece for the Halloween theme considering the amount of time to write the piece and get it rehearsed and performed wasn’t long enough to get a performance of this quality. Because of this I will not be voting for you for any of the Halloween specific badges that we will be handing out. But the composition is definitely skillfully conceived, although musically, it’s not my cup of tea. I won’t go so far as to call it pure noise, since there’s definitely melody to it, but I didn’t particularly enjoy it, and there’s definitely folk dances that I do enjoy that are conceived in a much more palatable style despite being modal and also using clusters and dissonance. I guess the degree of dissonance was just too much for me in this particular case. But there is craft to this piece, despite that. So good job and thanks for your participation!

Entry: American Cryptids - Fall 2025 Halloween Submission by @Micah 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 10 10 10 Average Score: 10.00 Review: Mothman - I really enjoyed this one! I can immediately imagine the fluttering of the Mothman’s wings portrayed by the arpeggiation of the stack of 5ths that’s so well and idiomatically set for the Violin, Viola and Cello. The non-vibrato Violin harmonics portray the red light shooting out from the Mothman’s eyes like lasers! Letiche - Moderate swing for string quintet?! Quite unusual to say the least! But it creates a very slithering character very appropriate for this cryptid. And the glissandi really make it sound like it’s creeping around the corner and sticking its head out of the swamp here and there. Very cool! You’re not the first in this competition to use glissandi to very effectively creep us out! Great job! La Chupacabra - Very quiet to start off with to portray the stalking behavior of this predator, which then transforms into a chase scherzo. I can imagine the running reptile-like hound chasing its prey and sucking the blood out of it. Very grotesque - I would have enjoyed hearing even more of this movement! Although I know you’re limited by our time constraints. I encourage you to post the complete finished work for us once the contest is over! I think your work definitely deserves more attention. I enjoyed listening to this piece so much that I forgot that I had to score it! Thankfully, there is little to criticize here. What really stands out in your pieces is their very effective characterization of the different cryptids which just brings a whole other dimension to the music and the overall experience. Also, despite this not having been written with this competition in mind, it fits the theme of Halloween very well and I am glad that you entered. Because of how different the character of each of your pieces is, it could be a contender for just about any of the Halloween specific badges that we’ll be giving out! We’ll see how people vote. Congratulations on a wonderful achievement and I look forward to hearing the whole thing!

Entry: Piano Quintet in G sharp minor - 2025 Halloween Competition Submission by @Wieland Handke 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 10 9 10 9 9 9 Average Score: 9.19 Review: It’s a clever idea to use themes from your pre-existing series of preludes and fugues! It makes your piece that much richer. I like how you give a programmatic context also, for why the piece is for this particular instrumentation (and why you’re using a honky-tonk piano patch! LoL) The piece is certainly creepy and fits the Halloween theme quite well. It’s easy for me to follow the various different recurring themes despite the complex harmonic language that you use. And in the end I guess you included the sound of someone stepping through the leaves? Besides that the ending did kind of sound like the music just stopped. It seems like the piece could have ended at any of the short pauses/cadences that you have throughout the piece and it would have had the same effect. But I guess it’s hard to make a piece sound truly conclusive in this kind of style. Also, I noticed in the recording that there’s some grace notes present that I can’t see in the score - what did you intend there? Thanks for your participation and good luck in the public voting polls!

Entry: A Hollow Theme for Halloween (Fall 2025 Competition) by @therealAJGS Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6.5 6.5 5 8 7 7 10 7 Average Score: 7.13 Review: Your piece really captures the creepy and tense Halloween atmosphere through wise instrument choices. You have Vibraphone, Harpsichord, Organ, Drumkit, and Celesta? I’m guessing though. But like others have said, it would really help to be able to see a score and it might also cause you to refine how you write your music overall. But in my opinion, you’re a top contender for the “Creepiest/Scariest” badge. Of course, the piece has many weak points, such as the fact that it repeats basically the same harmony/melody throughout the whole piece with cosmetic changes coming only from different kinds of layering of the different instruments. There was a wise choice to modulate up a step at a certain point in the piece to infuse it with some much needed excitement/novelty. The score you provided is pretty bad - the rhythms overlap in such a way as to make it difficult to know where the beats land. I think the link to the piano roll view in your online sequencer is better in this case and saved you from getting a zero in score presentation. Thanks for participating and good luck in the popular voting!

Entry: From Above, Now Below by @Thatguy v2.0 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 10 10 10 Average Score: 10.00 Review: This piece is awesome! It was the inspiration for creating the “Biggest Thriller” badge, so I hope you win! This is definitely edge-of-your seat intensity and drive throughout (but with some much needed contrasting sections). I guess this piece was the reason behind your post in the Random thread about how you’re annoyed by the Octatonic scale and how it’s always difficult to pick the most correct enharmonic spellings for it since it doesn’t fit neatly into our Heptatonic musical system. This actually reminds me in style of Alan Silvestri’s score to the “Back to the Future” trilogy - he also uses quite a lot of Octatonic scale in that score. The creepy string harmonics and glissandi really add to the horrifying mood when it’s not intense and in-your-face. The piece is also very motivically unified and develops well. The downward sliding glissandi give an impression of a blurring or evoke images of humid bathroom mirrors breaking. The girl taking a shower in the high school locker room after hours is scared by something seen out of the corner of her eye and the chase begins. The ending is just as spine-chilling without really resolving anything for the listener. Great job and thanks for suggesting this competition!

Entry: 2025 Halloween Competition - DANCE FROM THE SKELETON BALL (Submission) by @MK_Piano Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6 8 6 6 10 10 10 7.5 Average Score: 7.94 Review: The main melodic material in this piece, to me, sounds like an accompaniment or bass line (which is I guess appropriate since the theme is first introduced in the Cello). You also seem to use elision to cut the length of this phrase to three bars, which to me makes it sound incomplete and confuses the phrase structure of the melody (although now that I count the measures, you still manage to get the whole phrase to be 8 measures long from bar 13 to 21). The main vibe or feel that I guess you’re going for here is achieved by the oom-pah’s in the Piano and Violin and Viola (at least at first) - that’s what makes it sound like a dance to me. But melodically, the piece, to me, seems dominated by accompanimental material and scales in the Piano that’s suitable as background music but doesn’t carry a long leading melodic line that is so necessary in classical concert pieces. To me it sounds like an orchestrated chord progression (on further reflection there’s definitely melodies here but I’ll keep this original comment here to give you an idea of my first impression of the piece). That doesn’t mean that it’s not effective at setting a certain mood/vibe though. Or getting the listener to imagine a skeleton ball dance which is the whole point of the composition which is why I scored the Execution of Given Challenge category at 10. But that is why I scored the Melodies/Themes/Motives category the way I did. And despite the fact that you have a contrasting section that harks back to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, that section doesn’t really introduce any new and memorable melodic material either and the most salient feature of that section is the triplet accompaniment figure in the Piano. So even though there’s hints of a memorable melody here and there, the piece as a whole seems comprised mostly of accompanimental figures repeated as a vamp (to me). But the introduction is good and really sets the stage for a great piece of music! It just doesn’t really deliver on its promises imo. But I do appreciate the recurring of the main motif in bar 43 in a different tempo and context! I should mention that I also see some similarities between this submission and @UncleRed’s “Ghost Town Requiem”. I use the same reasoning in the scoring of this work as I did with that one. Thanks for your participation and good luck to you!

Entry: Bagatelle No.6 | Om. 101 by @Omicronrg9 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 10 10 10 Average Score: 10.00 Review: This piece is more contemplative, perhaps a bit reminding me of Erik Satie. The overall major tonality is encroached upon by out-of-key notes that give the piece a happy-go-lucky but creepy quality much like the way clowns are happy but creepy to many people. It’s very atmospheric and free until the main theme comes in in bar 32 which is unsettling in its lack of clear melodic direction and resolution. But this lack of direction and resolution is intentional and definitely achieves a certain deliberate effect. When listening to the main theme of this piece I imagine a creepy clown dancing and bobbing his head left and right LoL. The piece ends like an unfinished puzzle better left that way or maybe like a question better left unanswered. I could also imagine this being played in a movie such as “The Talented Mr. Ripley”. The rendition also uses crystal clear piano and flute which are a big advantage to this listeners impression of the piece. This piece also borders on being both atmospheric and a storytelling piece. It has both melodic development and cinematic repetition of its themes. Very excited to see how people will vote in this competition. Thanks for your participation and good luck to you!

Entry: YC Halloween Contest Entry - The Mist by @Kvothe Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 5 4 7 5 8 8 6.5 Average Score: 6.44 Review: There are many incorrect enharmonic spellings in your score. And the way in which the piece progresses seems to be serendipitous or based on your whims rather than any kind of intentional plan. You introduce something which is quite a creepy and unnerving main theme with good use of repetition - but then you don’t even try to develop it. The use of the Dies Irae motif is a cop out because it seems like you didn’t know what direction to take the composition in nor what to do. Unsurprisingly, the piece ends in quite a random spot like you just decided to quit composing. But for some of the pieces' duration it certainly does fulfill its role as a Halloween piece. Its duration just isn’t long enough for the contest requirements. You had lots of time to craft a longer piece if you simply had the patience. But thanks for your participation and good luck in the public voting polls!

Entry: YCF Composition Competition - Halloween 2025 (Submission) by @UncleRed99 Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 4 7 7 7 9 9 10 7.5 Average Score: 7.56 Review: You’ve set a very atmospheric mood that would be very appropriate as background for perhaps a Ghost Town hidden object game or a short film or documentary about a Ghost Town! As a concert piece however it falls short of the melodic and harmonic development prescriptive norms of classical music. The most salient features of your piece that leave a lasting impression after the piece has concluded are the moods created by your chord progressions and oom-pah accompaniment figures which give a certain impression of a grotesque dance perhaps akin to @MK_Piano’s submission DANCE FROM THE SKELETON BALL submission. I can’t hum, whistle or sing any of the melodies that you present in this piece after the piece has concluded. I mention this because I think you probably do consider that this piece has melodies, but to me it doesn’t. The melodies are too complex and not self-similar enough to stay in this listener's musical memory and create a lucid listening experience. I know this isn’t the first time you’ve heard me say this, so let me just try to elaborate on the point in a way I haven’t before. The reason why Beethoven’s 5th Symphony 1st movement is so popular and such a lucid listening experience is because he managed to generate all the melodic material and unify it through a single motif, sometimes using it as just a rhythmic motif, sometimes as both rhythm and pitch, and other times as just pitch. There is great economy in the melody. There isn’t a single note that is missing nor superfluous. I am not saying that you should aim for perfection in your music, I’m just trying to point out how Beethoven used the motif as a dynamo to generate and develop all the rest of his melodic material and create a lucid listening experience. Many composers have done this and you don’t have to be a genius to use the idea to your advantage. I hope that makes clear what I mean when I keep talking about these things. But you did create a piece which as I said, is very appropriate for the Halloween theme. Another advantage is the crystal clear rendition of your music - the piano sounds like glistening ice in its high register. Another way I’d describe the melody in Polish is “tuzinkowe” which translates to “random” or “ordinary” (a term I learned after my grandma used it to describe some of my music LoL). There is a certain grotesquery to the melody too, because it's dark and it has a sort of march-like character. But, those are my thoughts. Thanks for your participation!

Entry: Aos Si - Piano Quintet for Halloween by @HoYin Cheung Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6 6 6 10 7 10 10 7.5 Average Score: 7.81 Review: Riddled with glissandi and Bartok pizzicati this piece is very intense and creepy! You’re steeped in extended techniques and scattered among your score are lots of little character indications such as “Trick or treat?” and “Treat!” etc. which don’t necessarily add anything to the audible performance. It’s fun though! And I get that you’re trying to add more expression but I think you’re going overboard. Especially with the tempo markings at 129 (three measures before H). It’s overkill to put so many expressive tempo markings in succession to each other. The only way these kinds of indications make sense is if they also refer to the character of a certain section of music. But here there are no audible changes of character. Instead you could have written an accel. into measure 130 beat 2, a rit. into 131 and an accel. again into 132 with tempo marked with metronome markings only. Speaking still of the score, in chamber music it is customary to put the piano at the bottom of the score with the strings going at the top. But as far as the Halloween theme is concerned it certainly works quite well! There is drive and intensity to this piece as well as motivic development and repetition. And plenty of tortured gestures from the strings especially. Great job!

Entry: Trio Variations in D minor: A Submission to the 2025 Halloween Composition Competition by @TristanTheTristan Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 7 7 9 5 5 10 7.5 Average Score: 7.44 Review: This is an effective theme and variations piece considering the constraint of having to keep the piece sounding like Halloween. As a theme and variations piece it definitely could have used more variety though. For example, all your variations are in D minor and basically keep the harmonic structure of the theme intact (although you change that a little bit in the coda and with the picardy third and Variations 10 and the beginning of 11, and the introduction is unique). You could have fragmented the theme melodically and recombined the fragments in new and interesting ways (which is one of my favorite ways to create variations). Also, in chamber works, the piano goes below the string instruments. So the violin should have been on top in this score. Also, all the tempi sound like they are too fast in your piece. Perhaps it’s because of youth (I think young people somehow are attracted to fast intense pieces more), but I think your piece would breathe much better and sound much less metronomic and mechanical in its rendition if the tempi were all a bit slower, or perhaps if you included some rubato (by including rit.’s or accel.’s). This also makes your piece sound less like it was written for a computer and more like it was written for human beings! But there are lots of things you can do to humanize it! When the theme is first introduced, it for sure could have been a bit slower. And then, as the piece developed you could slowly amp up the tempo to make things more exciting/interesting! There are also places where the Violin would be totally swamped and covered up by the heavy piano chords that imo sound like they’re way too loud and thick (but that’s just my personal taste). Also, cadenzas are usually supposed to be unaccompanied (or the composer usually finds clever ways to accompany themselves on a single instrument). Another thing to watch out for when writing variations is that, if the variations aren’t different enough from each other you end up having a lot of repetition in your piece which can be boring. As far as the goal of writing a Halloween themed piece, I think this one is a success!

Entry: Woodwind Quintet No. 1 - Halloween Competition Submission by @Maxthemusicenthusiast 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 7.5 8 8 9 7.5 7 Average Score: 7.69 Review: I think your piece effectively plays with consonance and dissonance. It definitely sounds unnerving though, and perhaps because of the midi rendition and dissonance, reminds me of old video games I used to play called X-Com and X-Com 2: Terror from the Deep. I can also hear the bossa nova rhythms, but they don’t bring to mind an ice cream truck at all (to me). The atmosphere is definitely one of horror though, despite it being to me, not well defined besides that. Melodically, the piece definitely has recurring themes and motives. The piece is also idiomatic and well conceived for the instruments that are meant to play it - there are plenty of places for the players to breathe. Despite the piece having a tense atmosphere, I feel like it often lacks forward momentum and drive, but perhaps you didn’t intend for that. But thanks for your participation and good luck in the public voting polls!

Entry: CLOWNS - Fall 2025 Halloween Competition Submission by @sebastian Pafundo Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 7 3 8 10 9 7 7 Average Score: 7.25 Review: This piece has a unique and spooky melodic identity, with the melody at first seeming to fit nicely into a C# minor harmony but soon subverting the listeners expectations harmonically. The piece has a contrasting middle section in C lydian, but ultimately, the reason why I scored Form/Development/Structure/Time low is because the piece uses too much repetition of the main melody without developing it motivically. I guess you instead opted to develop the piece in a cinematic way, but it nonetheless results in a very repetitive piece of music. Also, the setting of the melody (what accompanies it) is quite often conceived very serendipitously, to me seeming to lack intentionality. And the music doesn’t conclude but simply stops and the duration is the minimum required for the competition. But thank you for your participation and good luck in the public voting polls!

Entry: Fumage - Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Bassoon (Halloween Competition Submission) by @Justin Gruber Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9 10 10 10 6 5 8.5 Average Score: 8.44 Review: The ostinato treatment of melody in this is really great and creative. And because of how you’ve conceived of the melodies they layer really well on top of each other. There’s a lot of planing in the harmony but it doesn’t detract from my impression of the piece. I do think there’s spots where your players will be running out of air. There’s some places where you require them to play for very long periods of time without taking a breath which is why I scored playability at 6. For example, between rehearsal N and O, the Flute and Oboe especially are required to play without breath for 16 bars. They would have to sneak a breath somewhere cutting off one of the quarter notes and the phrase wouldn’t sound smoothly connected, like the way you intended it here. The other thing I scored low is the execution of given challenge category. Despite being quite a coherent and well-conceived piece, harmonically, melodically and formally, the piece just doesn’t sound like a Halloween piece and as evidenced by the title page of your pdf, was written in 2024, way before this competition was conceived. For this reason I will not be voting for this piece to receive any of the Halloween specific badges/awards that this competition is giving out (besides the “2025 Halloween Participant” badge which all the participants will receive). But this for sure is an accomplished piece of music, so thanks for your participation!