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You know what... by seeing this sentence immediately those two opening chords play on my brain and the music plays itself non-stop.....

No Doubt C# minor!! My all fav. piece, Beethoven's op.131 Quartet is also in that key. And I write my 3rd Piano Sonata in the key too. My upcoming piano pieces set will be in that key too. Henry

Hello folks! Been a little bit (always is a little bit between when I talk on here it seems) I've been hard at work at college writing all sorts of stuff, but amid all the music I'm writing and playing for school, I've also been working on a personal piece for solo piano. Dedicated to someone I love very much, the piece is an exploration of love. Movement 1 is the only movement written so far, and it is about passionate love (maybe I'll call it Eros. Still figuring out names or if I even want names for the movements.) I'll explain the movement's structure so you can maybe understand what I'm trying to do. Intro: It starts floating on an A dominant 7 chord, overtop of which soars a delicate but sometimes dissonant melody with huge leaps. It remains in this uncertain space a little while. Then it bursts into arpeggios and a fanfare-like triplet motif in F Major, gradually building more and more, before collapsing into the exposition. Exposition: The first theme in F minor is fiery and built from two motifs, the passionate right hand and the rumbling left hand. Cadencing in the relative major, the motifs then set off to transition to the next area. The second theme is in the distant key of D major and is a beautiful transformation of the melody from the introduction. A recurring turn motif brings the melody to its PAC and the closing theme commences with triumphant arpeggios (you will hear the inspiration from Chopin Ballade no. 4) but is suddenly overturned by D minor with the rumbling left hand motif of the first theme, ending the exposition dramatically in Bb Major!! Unlike I think literally all of my other sonata form pieces, there is no exposition repeat before the development. Development: In the soundscape of the exposition's closing chord, the developed introductory melody quietly emerges, again unsure, interwoven with fragments of the first theme. Eventually the second theme's rumbling motif takes hold, and a series of violent sequences commences. At its climax, it collapses again in a whirlwind. Out of the bleak, emerges now the second theme, in a hopeful manner, modulating from Ab Major to E minor, and finally culminating in the most passionate and beautiful variation in G Major, with repeated chords and heavy rubato. It reaches its turn motif and PACs in G Major erupting into the closing theme arpeggios, but now being derailed again, even earlier than last time into C minor! And now we're at the Fugue, based on the same rumbling left hand motif that's been so persistent in the development. After reaching its peak, it sequences a little more and is now in C Major and has successfully set up the dominant retransition to the tonic F minor! Recapitulation: First theme is mostly the same as before. The transition is however different and more "bravura" than before. The second theme tragically is now in F minor, and doesn't get its old turn motif to cadence, and instead prepares to close the movement in the drama of the first theme. But it's diverged! We move away from that extreme low register now into the highest register as we hear one last time the full second theme in F Major, much barer and more suspended, but again with its cadence motif. But it doesn't finish quite yet. It repeats the motif, before slipping back into an A dominant 7 chord for the coda. Coda: Largely an exact repeat of the introduction, but what was before a solid dominant pedal, is now broken up by the tonic in the bass, giving a more resolved sound. With no more burst into F major, the movement closes on low D Major chords. Now the reason I really want your guys' feedback is because I want to play this for the dedicatee soon, and I just want to make sure it's perfect before I present it to him. I did show the piece to my professor, but he said it sounded too traditional and suggested I listen to Sciarrino for inspiration 🥲 Let's just say I have different taste than him lol. The performance isn't perfect, and the score is very unpolished! But everything should come across pretty well hopefully. Thank you in advance! 😄

@Churchcantor Almost nobody is familiar with Jommelli, and more is the pity. His Requiem is in E-flat major, yet it still sounds appropriately sombre. There are several good performances available on YouTube. Here's a link to my favourite:

I'm not familiar with Jommelli, though I do know the Michael Haydn Requiem (influenced Mozart's), the Bruckner Requiem (modeled on Mozart's and in the same key of D Minor) that he wrote at age 24 and revised later in life, and even the Salieri Requiem, which has some great vocal writing! Gee Whiz; the Jommelli Requiem was written in the year of Mozart's birth! How weird is that? I will listen to it. My Requiem is MODELED on Mozart's unfinished Requiem, if you listen closely and see how I broke out the text. It does not SOUND like Mozart, except for the occasional turn of phrase.

Those octaves ARE divisi; I just don't mess with musical directions or even bowings on Noteflight. It's hard enough for me to just enter the notes! My manuscript has everything, though I'm not sure I even messed with that in the ms of this particular number! Vocally, this is beyond the means of the average church choir, obviously I would think! 😆

What is your favorite key/Note? or really, When you think of a melody, What key is it normally in? I came across this about a month ago where I noticed most of my music was in the key of D minor, and when I thought of a melody it was also in D minor; even though now there's a bit of B mixed in. It's just sort of a simple question, and I really want to see what others have to say about it!

I've noticed that for Christmas music (yes - it's that time of year and I've already written a piece for the season!) I always tend to write in the key of Eb major for some reason. It also happens to be the key of my favorite Beethoven Symphony - No. 3. Perhaps it's because of that symphony that people ordinarily think of that key as "heroic" but I think of it more as a warm key. I also prefer flat keys, even if it causes way more flats in the key signature than is practical. For example - I prefer Ab minor or Eb minor to G# or D# minor. I'll just use the Ab major and Eb major key signatures and write extra accidentals for the notes I need to make it minor. Interesting topic!

Hello, I will be just looking at your “ the evening sun”. Great pacing with the strings so far. Also, I like the flute solo thing. I like the mood that is giving off I like the little effects from the strings popping out sometimes I feel like the melodies can be smoothen out a little more in the brass I like the percussion arrangement and the instrumentation in the use of the percussion I believe that was a bassoon solo and it’s higher register I couldn’t tell that was very good The ending with solid, and yeah, it was a good composition just a little thing about pacing and what not and the piece direction it was one of those pieces that feels continuous because it’s short it doesn’t feel like the same thing and it’s structured in a good way with different instrumentations throughout and unique orchestration anyways good job

@PeterthePapercomPoser Oopsie, yep, fixed. (Unless it was a bass oboe 😮)

I'll just tag @MJFOBOE in this thread. Maybe he might be able to help you..

Hi Churchcantor: I've never thought of doing that, as I have rather few views, and I'm very much an amateur, but if you have Dorico Pro version 6 I could send the files. I have never tried to make a printable "engrave" version in Dorico, and as it is, the files are rather unreadable when i go to "engrave", I need to change the font or something, the staff-lines run into each other. It would off course be a good training to make an engrave version, so I might look into that, give it a month or so, then I could send a PDF. If you are interested, I have a couple of new small symphonic pieces: Sun in November October Nights

Wow! Some surprisingly good counterpoint, though it's difficult to see how it will all fit together without the text underlay. Consciously or not, you've taken a cue from Niccolo Jommelli (1714-1774) in scoring your Requiem for voices and strings alone...his Requiem (1756) was the most popular and often requested of its day, until Mozart wrote his in 1791. The sparing orchestration makes it more likely to get played. I agree with ComposaBoi on just about everything he said. Measure 11: The tenor part goes dangerously low, down to B below tenor C; consider a D instead if it won't mess up your counterpoint. Measure 17: Awkward for Violin I - the C on beat 3-1/2 is icky to try to reach down to there, it means shifting a third down the fingerboard for one note, then shifting back up again; consider the G above instead. Measure 31: Odd ending, it seems to me. There is no third in the chord, and while that's not without precedent, I don't feel like it works here. Consider an E-flat as the final note in the Soprano and Violin I. Show us more of this as you have it! Well done!

I would second that. I can't really get a good impression of your piece from Noteflight, the playback is too ropey. (That may be why you're not getting many reviews.) MuseScore would give a much better rendition of your score, even with no tweaks whatsoever.

The counterpoint is very impressive, so well done! I would have liked to see how the lyrics align with the notes, but I'm not sure if note flight is capable of that. I would definitely recommend musescore if you can fit it on your computer. It is free after all. The main issue is how you're writing for your forces. Violin octaves are a little unreasonable for a tutti section. It's too difficult without a good justification. I would either NOT have the octaves, or have the violins divisi. And the voice ranges are going into risky registers. There's a good short guide "ranges for choral singers: a guide for composers" by Chris Hutchings that's literally just a page and tells you pretty much all you need for writing for choral voices. You can probably find it online.

Hello @JorgeDavid To me this rather sounds like Rachmoninov vocalise. You share the similar the melodic fluency that his did. Yes, I can hear the Bartok and Stravinsky. But, I am not sure how. The vocal line is beautiful; and the piano part is nice. It is nice piece overall. This would be great piece for a warmup.

Huge disclaimer: I am not an oboist. But I'd imagine it really depends on what you need the oboe to do. My first immediate thoughts go to the intro in Haydn's oboe concerto which, if I remember correctly, holds onto C6 for quite a while. It does go up to D at the end of the first movement, but only on a non-diatonic chord, so that extra brightness is warranted. Even then, it's really short. I compare that to his contemporaries' concerti, Mozart's, Kozeluch's, and Ferlendis's. On a quick scan, I don't much see anything past C in any of them, though I see some similarities to Haydn's: Kozeluch is also comfortable holding onto C5 for a while and Mozart uses D5 as a brief note in a higher moment. From what I remember for Ferlendis's, it plays it pretty safe, all things considered. I don't have the music, but a quick Google search shows that nothing over C5 is really lingered on. For that reason, my gut tells me to say that C5 is where you edge out for longer, full-bodied sounds and things above it like D5, etc., can be used quickly on occasion, but not in the same way as C5, and certainly not commonly. But that's all conjecture; I don't actually know the ins and outs. Luckily I write modern music, so those suckers have to deal with whatever I give them, hee hee hee!

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