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Viola and Piano Heres this duo I wrote for the international contemporary ensemble, during my first year at UCR. Its not 12 tone i just kinda let my ear guide me. I liked the piece tho hated the process of composing it.

Here is the song that I take it to be the first of the project to be transcribed

Hi Guyz....................The 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗗𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 for "Main Title Themes".................Current trends appear to be getting shorter.

Here is a progress report on the piece Still working on transitions, dynamics, harmony, etc, but I do think the piece is coming together. Any feedback would be very much welcomed. String Quintet No.2.pdf String Quintet No.2.mp3 The cello has the melody in the last A section, so I wanted to change the chord progression and experiment with some different voicings that will allow the cello to really sing and emphasize the melody, while still having some nice full harmonies. A2.pdf A2.mp3 👆🏾 Some material I wrote thinking I could use to add to the piece (this would pick up where the first pdf ends). I'm not quite settled on it, so I wanted to get some feedback first. The title of the piece will be, "Metamorphosis", so even though it's a rondo, I would like each time the A melody is presented, that there is a slight adjustment made. A - melody + accompaniment A1 - I'm thinking slight changes to the harmony and adding some more arpeggiated accompaniment A2 - cello & viola melody and different voicings + melodic material to finish the piece I'd like a heightened moment and then landing on a big chord, I'm thinking F#m, but A major could also work.

This has to be one of my favorite pieces you've written my friend...it's so delicate and tender and perfectly suited to the occasion. Your string voicings work really well to get that full, yet soft sound. Nicely done, my only critique would be the length, I felt the piece could've been longer, but works at the current length, especially for the occasion for which it will be used.

Sadly, I have strong feeling that piece might land well with competition. :(

Hi! I am continuing my revision on my old work. This is the 2nd movement of my Clarinet Quintet in C minor, which is completed 4 years ago and I'm revising it. Thx to my friend @Thatguy v2.0 for making the audio! To me this is probably the worst movement in the piece, but only because it's the most one dimensional one: After the discovery of despair in the 1st movement, I started to fall into confusion and craziness of despair. Ironically this movement is written in a neat Sonata form with the structure presented below: 0:00 First subject, exposition. Start right from the despair Eb-D-C-B motive in quick Scherzo time to represent the fury and confusion of despair. Clarinet joins in 0:31, still playing at the despair motive, and in 0:33 the whirling figure using despair motive signifying the confusion is introduced. 1:27 Transition, exposition. I like this pizz. theme myself for how sarcastic it is. 2:34 Second subject, exposition. In F minor. A more "reasonable" theme finally with major keys visited, although finally succumbed to the confusing despair. I always go to F minor instead of G minor for the secondary key of a C minor movement for its darkness. 3:46 Development. Continue with the confusion by quickly modulating to different keys. I really love the 3:59 passage with a Brahmsian turn to a German sixth chord in 4:09! The fury ends with a "transcended" sadness in Neapolitan C# minor in 5:20 with a clarinet solo, but sarcastically laughed off by pizzicato strings in another Brahmsian German sixth. 5:49 First subject, recapitulation. Excitement reduced after a suffocating development. In 6:02 obviously I learn from Beethoven's 5th for that famous solo oboe passage. I love how fierce it is in 6:38. 6:47 Transition, recapitulation. Shorter than exposition's transition. I hate exact repetitions. 7:25 Second subject, recapitulation. Same as the one in exposition except in tonic key. Notice how relative major Eb major is finally used with some emphasis for the very first time in the piece, as the confrontation of B flat carried by E flat major and B natural by C minor of the despair motive would be the main battlefield later on. 8:38 Coda. One last cry and I am exhausted by the despair, thus ends the movement in tired pizzicato chords. Only with this exhaustion do I have the motivation to excavate the true reason behind the despair, which would be the main theme for the 3rd movement. Here is the score and youtube video of the movement : (For YT)Clarinet Quintet in C minor 2nd mov Final Version 20260707.pdf Harmonically I deliberately play with chord progression of augmented triad keys to reinforce that particular chord both horizontally and vertically, as well as resonating with the despair motive. Hope you enjoy this one and offer some critique to the movement! P.S. This is the 1st movement of the remastered version of the work: Henry Clarinet Quintet in C minor 2nd mov Final.mp3

Thank you so much!! I’ll revise the rendition with the dynamics in mind!!

Hi @Cafebabe ! I really like this piece! It reminds me so much of Schubert with the main theme! Devilish, a bit dark humor just like his F minor Moment Musical and the figuration is really similar. The rhythm there is so funny. The piece is idiomatic on piano with all those quick notes. I have perfect pitch and I agree this piece works so well with the dark F minor. Really enjoy this one and thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @UncleRed99 ! I forget either lol! I really like this one. It sounds so solemn and very proper for the theme. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @Kvothe ! I agree with the alto clef suggestion by @Fruit hunter and the register issue by @Luis Hernández . To me it sounds like Chinese music featuring mostly pentatonic melodies. I think you can feature more solo moments by each of the three instrumentalists in their unique color: The high unique register of piccolo and the C string area of viola are never explored in this piece, while the harp is almost monotonously playing broken chords except the glissando near the end. To me chamber music should have the players fully enjoying their own parts with some challenging passages, while playing together there should be 1+1>2 effect, rather than weaking all players' uniqueness. Thx for sharing. Henry

Hi @Scriabinian ! I feel like the dynamic level of the rendition is unvaried at all! The ff passage sounds the same as mp passages. I have to admit I don't listen to the full piece because of the dynamic level, will you update the post with a more accurate rendition? Looking from the score I think it should be a really beautiful piece featuring rich counterpoint in a Sextet setting! Henry

Hi @Oak ! I agree with @Lithl that the alarm sound doesn't need the percussion. I will go further, I think only the vibraphone will be needed to wake your friends up in a peaceful manner! Henry

Hi! Will you post the original piano work separately first? I feel like I will have to go through the original full work before commenting on this one since I want to get to know how the four subjects are introduced before getting into this one! Henry

You should have posted this when I composed my Sextet, so I can steal your technique of interchanging between tritones of C major and F# major!! I spent too much time then to find a solution linking those two key areas lol! On the music itself it's a really jazzy waltz with very nice voice leading throughout. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @MK_Piano ! A really exciting and enjoyable piece! I have a lot to learn from your scoring and engraving and orchestration skills. The energy level in the outer sections is so well maintained which reminds me how vivacious you are in real life and here. I thoroughly enjoy this one, as this is not something I can compose. I don't have this kind of energy level myself and hence nothing similar to show in my own pieces. My favourite section is the middle section. It's real nice contrasting section featuring woodwinds when the outer sections are predominated by brass and strings. The counterpoint here is better than the outer sections too haha, because in the outer sections you feature more homophony and octave doublings which is apt to the steam theme too! And then some of my subjective thoughts: I think there is a bit unbalance in b.47 Rehearsal no. F to modulate to D flat major. Maybe an 8 bar phrase will be better than the 6 bar phrase now, but that's my personal thought. Also, I think you can have more prominent changes in the last A section, other than the key which is the most obvious change. Yes the orchestration is varied there and the texture is even thicker than the exposition, but I think you can slightly change the order of events in the recap, and change the modulation plan, since you modulate from Eb to Db major in the exposition, modulating from F to Eb major sounds similar to me so the heightening effect by modulating is weakened to me. I think ending in Eb major is the right option as to maintain the same key for the beginning and end, so you can begin in a key other than F major in the start of section L, which gives another advantage for having another modulation apart from the middle section, which is also in F major. P.S. Huge props to you @UncleRed99 for bringing @MK_Piano here! Definitely vitalizing the forum much more haha! Thx for sharing this wonderful piece! Henry

No, this is all within MuseScore Studio! Uncertain on the second part. It is registered on ASCAP and when I get the parts finished, I will self-publish to J.W. Pepper. In terms of performance, I have prepared an email to be sent out to a director of a 60-80 member orchestra in Joplin, Missouri. I was reached out by their principal trumpet player last year in regard to this work. When I notified him yesterday of the overhauled work, he gave me the contact of their director. We'll see if it bears fruit. My universities orchestra director gave me the chance to drop off some scores to her office for a reading session, and I have ordered Waves of Frisco Bay and Tuckasegee Flyer to be print at the beginning of next week. To add, I sent Waves of Frisco Bay out for two separate Call for Scores and should be notified of those events over the course of this month and into September. TL,DR: Hopefully!

Very professional and detailed score. Did you use Dorico? I wonder will you be getting this performed by real musicians?

This^ My thoughts exactly

@MK_Piano and I have been composing together / critiquing one another's works for a time before either of us were apart of this forum. I recently brought him onto it, as a way for him to share his works with you all, when I am unavailable to give insight on what he is working on. Although, he is much more Theory-Literate than I am, on account that he actually followed thru with his music education, unlike myself, who dropped out of school back in 2018 😅 But yes, we have brought up the idea a couple of times, and even started something, but never followed thru with it, I think, simply due to incompatibility in terms of scheduling. We will likely get around to it, some time. But for now, consider many of our works to be collaborations in and of themselves. We've contributed something to many of eachother's scores, be it small or large contributions, we've had a hand in one another's work in some fashion for a time, now. :)

I see! This helps a lot of understanding. So, the overall fugue is modal, where in this excerpt, we are in Eb/D#-moll and modulate to the next mode for the Fifth Fugue. That makes a lot of sense. To add, yes, I did print on American Letter. With the color engraving, I do not think it is good for performance. The simplest answer I can give to rationalize this, is simply to look at what is currently being printed and published now. No Das wohltemperierte Klavier from Bach is going to be color-coded by Henle, Bärenreiter, or Breitkopf und Härtel for the sake of showing the subjects. It is good for pedagogy and analysis, as printed theory books will include such information. However, not for performance. Anyone who has taken 18th century theory and counterpoint can identify that information with some effort. The other thing about it is the perspective. The only time you may even need to include that info is for study of the entire score... So, when it comes to the conductor, are they going to be the only one to see that information? Are you going to format the parts with extra color for when each instrument has the subject? If a judging panel were going to see it, those questions arise and it would beg the question 'why did this composer feel the need to do this?' When it came to multiple rests, when ever the part is playing, yes, please include the individual voice rests if only one of them is playing. However, when both parts are not playing, only use a single whole rest to show an empty measure. Yet, in the score, you still notate 1. or 2. for when that part is playing. This can be correct, however, at the beginning with the clarinets or trombones, if ONLY one is playing, then please show another rest for the other part that is not playing. This only applies on the score and for the entire duration a voice is playing. For the parts, you would format separate documents for each instrument (two-parts for Trombones, Clarinets, etc. - Four-parts for horns). This said. you DO NOT need to write divisi for any other instrument except the strings. Divisi playing can be notated by the 1. or 2. you are using currently, however any other time should be notated by stem direction and rests, NOT the term divisi. If both parts are playing together, then only show one line of music. Why? because the parts will be separated. A conductor will see the different stem directions and know what those instruments are doing. The exception to this is in concert band/ wind ensemble music. That field sees something like 7 clarinets on one part, and in that case, you can just use numbers and a-due (a2.) to show when the parts are together. In orchestral music, not so much.

Hello @MK_Piano, many thanks for your urgent response and your helpful comments so far! To first give some context and answering the question 8. The Key., the underlying piano composition which I used for the orchestration is a six-part quadruple fugue for piano in B minor – the most complex composition I accomplished so far. It is 18 minutes long and has 360 measures and literally modulates to all 24 keys during its journey. I have chosen for the orchestration example, the fourth episode which is a modulating section from D# minor (wherein the fourth development section ends) to D major (which is the starting key of the fifth development section). Therefore, we have no B minor in this excerpt, but rather the modulation from Eb minor via C minor, A minor/A phrygian and finally by the C# diminished seventh chord to D major. Hupps, just as I’m typing that and wondering why you talk about a C# half diminished while I was sure that it is a C# diminished seventh, I see a typo in the last measure: in the piano original we have a B-flat but I have taken over a B-natural. However it also sounds good and I did not notice this mistake while listening, but I think, I’ll fix it. I just haven’t presented the entire piano fugue on YCF nor published it on YouTube yet (fortunately), so I came around with the – hopefully not too megalomaniacal – idea to use that material as the „sketch“ for an external composition competition. Therefore, again, many thanks for your comments, they will help me with this adventure. Sadly, I’m – if I participate in that contest – under „embargo“ concerning the material of the fugue I will use. 1. Page Margins. I also printed it and it has sufficient margins. Your troubles might have been caused since the PDF is in A4-format (as usual in Europe) and you probably tried to print it on an American printer? A full orchestral score on A4 is challenging, and one has to be very stingy with the space, but other commonly used formats for orchestral scores are not printable on a home or office printer and the contest’s request was also to use A4. 2. Having multiple colors within the engraving. I usually apply that colored annotations in fugues to highlight the subject entries, and I think it is helpful for analysis (thus, I use it in my videos and also when sharing pieces on the YCF). However, it is clear to me that a score intended for performance is only black and white. However, what do you think, would judges in a competition appreciate such a colored, analytical score, additionally? 3. Clefs and 4. Rests. I corrected the clefs with ottava numbers for Piccolo, Glockenspiel, Tuba and Contrabass as well as replaced the rests with centered whole rests whenever an entire measure is empty. 5. Rests again. Even if I have not yet seen your annotations, I guess that the suspected rests are merely those whenever two instruments share one staff. In this cases, whenever there are two voices on one staff, I often engraved the rests for both voices explicitely. But to make the score much more clearer, I suppose, you would suggest to apply that procedure only for the „divisi“ sections and in the other cases, if either only one instrument plays, or both in unison, to have only rests for the entire staff and not for each individual voice. 6. THE HARP. Yes, I have taken over as many as possible from the piano part to the harp, although I just had to make some simplifications concerning what notes are playable at one time (with a distinct pedal setting). I know that harpists are using only four fingers, therefore there are only „chords“ with maximum three notes in each staff. However, I suppose that you find some ninth intervals unplayable (while my online resources say that large intervals up to tenths would be playable using the thumb and the ring/fourth finger). What I perhaps could do, is to simplify the harp part - meaning to get rid from the (remainder of the) six-part voice leading in the piano score, and to notate all (or at least the most) notes to be played as quarter notes. I suppose, there is no big difference between a quarter note, a half or even a whole or tied note, as the length of the sounding is determined inherently by the instrument and there is no explicit damping required (as in the piano part, there are also long passages with sustain pedal). 7. Harp Pedals. I replaced the pedal diagram with letters (which is also much better readable for me ...). Episode4-Symphonic-Fugue-B-minor-revision1.pdf

I will see how it is scored. Then, i will go back revise it

@MK_Piano, you’ve created another wonderful piece! The way the composition unfolds right from the opening is fantastic. The section starting at 0:55 reminded me of the sound of a steam train whistle; it has a real sense of momentum, and the percussion works well, too. The part starting at 1:55 is a particular favorite of mine—the melody is so memorable. The calm section that follows at 2:25 is also excellent; the piece really tells a story. I’m sorry I can’t offer any specific advice regarding the sheet music or technical details. By the way, it looks like you and @UncleRed99 get along really well! I’d love to hear a full-scale collaboration between the two of you someday :) Best, Lithl.