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Thinking, "I should write a theme first and then a contrasting one," is exactly the sort of thinking about form that he is discussing. You sound like you are well on your way to thinking about the large scale issues with a piece, rather than just writing note by note. It sounds like he's talking about how beginning composers just sort of work from one note to the next without any rhyme or reason. There may be no theme at all, just a random succession of notes that they liked for five minutes straight. Everyone works one note to the next, but the more experience you have, the more you'll be thinking ahead about how to organize yourself in the choosing of those notes. Thinking, I have a fast section, so next I should have a slow one for contrast... that sort of thing. Or, I'm going to have range issues if I give this bit to that instrument without modulating. Do I want to modulate, or do I want to give it to a different instrument... And he wants to suggest some simpler exercises to get you started thinking about these sorts of things before you decide to write a whole symphony. Use fewer instruments. Write a short theme and see if you can turn it upside down. Practice writing a fugue. Also, Schoenberg is writing in a way that makes him sound like a big smarty pants so he can scare you into doing your homework, so don't be intimidated into a state of confusion, just do the exercises. (My best guess at what he was going for at any rate).

I recently bought Fundamentals of Musical Composition by Arnold Schoenberg and I am excited to be reading it as it is the first real reading I am doing on musical composition. In the first chapter he writes the following: "A composer does not, of course, add bit by bit, as a child does in building with wooden blocks. He conceives the entire composition as a spontaneous vision. Then he proceeds, like Michelangelo who chiselled his Moses out of the marble without sketches, complete in every detail, thus directly forming his material. "No beginner is capable of envisaging a composition in its entirety; hence he must proceed gradually, from the simpler to the more complex. Simplified practice forms, which do not always correspond to art forms, help a student acquire a sense of form and a knowledge of the essentials of construction. It will be useful to start by building musical blocks and connecting them intelligently." My question is how a composer can in their vision of the composition, imagine the entirety of the form before composing even a single motive. Sure, before beginning a composition, the composer feels the ineffable essence of what they wish to express in their composition, but the form is part of that too? I was surprised to read that a composer does not add bit by bit, since it seems natural to compose by writing a theme, and then a contrasting one. I have not, though, had much success doing so, so I guess I must begin small and internalize form as a begin composing small forms for practice. I may be misunderstanding something, but reading this seemed like a reality check that I was thinking of form wrong as a composer. Or maybe this "spontaneous vision" of the form is something only the greatest of the great composers can master. I don't know; I'm a beginner.

A great work (movement). The shift from romantic to jazz language is quite surprising, but I think that transition is very natural and adds a lot of value. You don't notice that it moves from one place to another, musically speaking.

I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately. I was studying the film scores and other orchestral recordings of the '90s in particular and trying to figure out, aside from things like tape, what made them sound the way they do. In researching it, I found that in the way it was recorded, mostly owing to technology of the time, is that the stereo field actually has a strong center. I don't think one gets the best results by trying to pan the orchestra precisely to where they would sit in real life, because it creates an image that is just too wide for a stereo recording. Which is a 2 dimensional thing, unlike the 3D sound you would experience if you were actually seated in a hall. It's like bass. As you mentioned, the low strings being off center feels wrong on a recording. I usually use a mono summing plugin to put the basses right in the middle. That's not "realistic", but it's what works for a recording. What you can do, is pan the orchestra basically according to its seating, but then use a mono plugin to slightly reduce the overall stere field by around 15% or so. You can still tell that the instruments are panned, but they all have more of a center image than they do "out of the box".

Hey @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu! I just thought I'd have another go at some random impressions to your random sounding 3rd movement! LoL I feel like measures 8 - 10 should be more different sounding rhythmically from 11 - 12. Right now they sound really similar even though the rhythms are clearly supposed to be different, which I think is just a result of your lazy right hand! LoL The chord in measures 16 - 18 sound really muddy and thick in the bass range (which is very Beethovenian of you!). I am not a particular fan of that aspect of both yours and Beethoven's music though. I like the confused allusion you make at measure 20 to one of the other movements of this sonata (I don't remember which right now and I'm too lazy to check LoL). It does really sound strange and confused like the music momentarily doesn't know where it's going. I like how you invert the main Allegro theme in the bass in measure 29. Cool canonic imitation! I thought the transition at measure 38 could have been milked further for a longer amount of time to give a more complete sense of transition (especially since you had just finished a 12 bar phrase and keeping the number of bars even numbered in each phrase might have been more appropriate here). I like the transition to a Revolutionary Etude style of accompaniment in measure 39! But in your favorite key of C# minor instead of C minor as in Chopin's piece, which I think makes it a little bit more difficult to play. Nice Locrian inflection at bar 47 which also seems like an allusion to the Revolutionary Etude since Chopin kind of does the same thing with the harmony at a certain place. I like how you gradually foreshadow the Nihilistically Scherzando section in the crazy part (63 - 71). I totally neglected to realize and mention how the Scherzando is both a 12-bar blues and includes a melody from somewhere before interweaving in between the crazy dotted rhythms! The constant juxtapositions between quick Allegro Agitato phrases and slow Adagio question-like phrase derived from another movement are really musically interesting and dramatic! I don't really feel like the transition at measure 183 does a good job at preparing the listener for the beautiful sweet appassionato melody you expose in the next bar (which I know is another quote of a melody from one of the other movements but I don't know which LoL). Nice canonic alternation between the right and left hand playing the melody in the appassionato section. I know you consider bars 221 - 241 as the most impressive part of this movement, but I don't really like it that much personally. I know it must have been difficult to play and it's a great technical feat to be able to execute! But musically it just doesn't do it for me LoL. I like how the recapitulation creates another juxtaposition between the crazy 12-bar blues material and the Adagio allusion. Are the pentatonic scales the quote of your Sextet? I think it's note entirely out of place in this piece. Nice ending - it sounds quite conclusively finished after a monumental work. Bravo! Thanks for sharing!

ok promised I'd c+p lol