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I am a violinist and a former orchestra player, so my advise should be realistic. I think most of the slurs you marked on this score is appropriate and practical, given most of the lines are in pianissimo or pianississimo. One useful thing to know is that, 1) if the part you are writing is not the main melody that do not need to be that is not that pronounced, and; 2) if there happens to be a decrescendo leading to a p or pp, then the string player is able to play the passage as slow as possible on the same stroke and the bow is treated as infinitely long. That may seem ridiculous, but that's the case. You play the "feeling" there. Tl;dr, 4-5 bar is totally possible with above prerequisite. One reason behind this playing style is that, it requires good technique to make the bow change unnoticeable. Due to the structure of bow, there is more tension at the bottom than at the bow tip. That will mean a natural decrescendo playing down bow (from bottom to tip) assuming a constant pressure applied. The reverse happens too, where a natural crescendo will occur playing upbow. So if there are any bow changes, the shift from cresc. to descrec. might be audible. While experienced players may control the pressure to mitigate the effect, they avoid changing bow unless the same phase really require 2 bows to project with expressiveness. Therefore, most of the cases, we keep it done in one single stroke for the above situations.

String player here as well. @HoYin Cheung has given great suggestions/advice. Side note: I'm currently marking bowings for an orchestra to perform Brahms Symphony 4, and Brahms loved his long slurs! Most of them are impractical and I think he didn't really think about how that would translate to the musician playing...but they do give an insight to how he wanted the players to phrase the music. I rarely mark bowings in my own music as I think it depends on the player/section/orchestra and how their style/approach to music.

For the crescendo and ff part, for instance, m.24-28, string players have the tendency to use more bows. That will mean the slur across measure 27 and 28 will be seperated in to 2 strokes. Otherwise, you made good notations. And the principal section player will make the decision for you and confidently use their own sets/rules of strokes as long as the whole section are using the same.😆No worries.

Okay making this post is a pretty impulsive decision and I hope I'm not intruding, I discovered this place today. In summary: I'm 15 years old, and I've been trying my hand at composing for around a year and a half now. I've written a handful of pieces I'm proud of, mostly for string orchestra. I'm a former violin player turned french horn, but I would consider myself having a much better understanding of strings than wind instruments (when it comes to composing). In my free time I'm also writing a book that is currently in the revision stages, and the plot of that inspired my newest piece. This is my first time truly writing for a full(er) symphony ensemble (there are missing parts right now, like tuba, that may never get added because I tend to write for sound, not playability, though if anyone has tips for that please please send them my way!!) and I'm trying to really develop my style and just improve my composing overall. Right now I am struggling with not exactly how to end this piece, but more of how to get there. It starts with mostly percussion to set the vibe, followed by an explosive entrance of the rest of the ensemble (0:57), then a softer melody (1:49) (there's more but I'm listing this for context). To end the piece, I intend to write just cellos playing that softer melody introduced earlier (in a different key I believe) with the recurring chimes over the top and probably other various percussion sprinkled in there (with attention on just the cellos). The melody will end and the piece will conclude like it started, with just percussion and a final chime hit. However, I have no clue what to do to get there. The attached recording ends with a callback to that earlier melody, but from there I've tried probably five different versions, none of which I like. My goal was to write one final "heroic" melody with a minor twinge to achieve the proper mood effect, but I ended up adding brass over the last string part at 4:39, so maybe that could be the height of the piece instead? I do really like that part. If anyone has any thoughts, any comments on anything in the piece, tips for compositional work, structural work, anything at all really, please let me know! It can be as long or as short as you like, I just would like help. I've never posted my music online before, know barebones music theory at best, and have a horrible ear for this kind of thing. Thank you in advance!! trial 2 incomplete.mp3

I tried to take the given advice into account, and now have a full start-to-finish version of the score! I've put a lot of hours into this and I'm rather proud of how it's turning out, especially considering my overall lack of experience. Transitions between sections of a piece are one of my main weaknesses, and consequently I tend to scrutinize them a bit more, but I feel there's still room for improvement (for example, I can't tell if measures 82-83 sound good or just out of place). That being said, I'm definitely open to suggestions for anything in this piece (especially notes on the ending, another one of my weaknesses). I've improved a lot but I've got a long way to go.