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Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9 8.5 10 10 8.5 9 8.5 Avg: 9.1 The intro is awesome! I love how you start this out, as chaotic, but structured chaos. I observed some instances of the whole tone scale towards the beginning, which I feel adds to the mystery of the voyage. It's clear from the music that you intended this to be a chaotic voyage, with the instances of adventure and reprieve. Fun motive towards the first third / or middle section of the piece. Very swing-like here, and I definitely get a sense of exploration and adventure around this section. Then you change it up the last 3rd (beautiful usage of a rest, creating anticipation, or a scene change), followed up with instances of mystery, calm and some chaos. For some reason I get a bit of a Rachmaninoff vibe here. Very jazzy ending, and yes as I listen to the ending right now, I definitely hear a tiny bit of Rach influence...this is pretty awesome! There was a lot of musical content here, definitely one of the more complex pieces in this competition. Either way, complex or not, this is an extremely creative piece. Your intro was killer, your middle section introduced the fun swing-like motive, the last third was enjoyable and quite melodramatic. Awesome use of the whole tone scale; you didn't overdo it, but used it just enough to add some fun mystery to this voyage. Well done!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9.5 7.5 9 10 9 10 9 8 Avg: 9 What I like about this piece, is the diversity of emotions and techniques. And in my opinion, your ending is the strongest part of the piece. But there are many good techniques you use here, so let's go through some of them that I've observed. First is your ability to create anticipation by using certain themes with instruments. You don't rush through your music which is something I admit I even have a hard time with. For example, you understand the usage of rests to help build tension and clarity. This is really important in all types of writing, not just music. The body of your piece has a clear theme / melody, but leading to that melody is what is even more impressive to me. You have a non standard first 1/3, but clearly lead to a more structured body. And as a result, this makes your music creative, but also very easy to follow. And now to the strongest part which is your ending. You flip the harmony and mood completely here. What makes this section so memorable, is the fact that most of the piece is pretty tame. So your ending becomes so unexpected, but it also gives the listener quite the shock. Very well done.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8 8 10 8 10 10 9.5 9 Avg: 9 This is such a beautiful piece. Even though it's not your best work (your words), I feel like the simplicity of this style is what makes it so powerful. Yes, it may be simple, but I feel like the technique is not so simple. And the emotions you were able to invoke were very real. Honestly, isn't that the point of music? The harmony also has extreme focus and purpose. I love towards the end when you just flip the key completely; such a powerful key change moment. The ending is also very nice, with the imperfect cadence. The balance of your instruments are done very well, and not overwhelming at all. This is important, you clearly know how to use the instruments to the song's advantage. Your techniques are fun, the cello knows just the right moment to chime in, the violins have a purpose and the piano does its role in supporting the harmony.

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 7 9 9 10 8.5 8 Avg: 8.6 Once the flute came in, things started to really pick up. I love your theme, and it was quite easy to spot about a minute in. I had to listen to this a few times to understand the structure, but I realized that this piece has a few motives here. But this is not clear until after a full minute into the piece. The things I love about this piece is your harmony, key changing, the flute, the use of the pentatonic scale.

Melodies Themes Motives: The piece is full of motifs that reflect the various impressions experienced during voyage of the ship. Most of them not in the manner of a melody but rather to create the respective impression: the waves, the storm, and the loneliness of a quiet night. However, there are also some melodic lines that turn the whole thing into “music” and not not only an agglomeration of imitated “sounds.” Well done! Harmony Chords Textures: The harmonic style is—though surprising at first—very varied: dramatic, atonal passages shift directly to more tonal, calm ones and are then interspersed with jazzy sections—which I really liked. One can literally imagine the different situations of the ship’s voyage: storm and heavy waves – and then again the calm, open sea or a lonely starry night. Form Development Structure Time: The composition does not follow any specific traditional form, which is perfectly acceptable for a piece intended to depict certain images, tell a story, or even serve as film music. Unfortunately, the playing time of more than 9 minutes exceeds the limits requested by the contest’s prerequisites. Originality Creativity: There is a lot of creativity! First, your attempt to get the inspiration from a prompt given random people with the task to draw the picture. How many attempts did you need? Or did you go with the first one? Since the result was unpredictable, you had to take up a scenario you perhaps did not think on and translate it to the music! And there is also lot creativity in the music itself. The instrumentation and the contrast between the more dramatic and the playful, jazz-like sections! Score Presentation: The score, while being dense due to the many “virtuoso” passages that need to be engraved, is clear and readable. Perhaps you have decided for the smaller font on the other instruments than the piano to achieve that more staves would fit on a single page. Instrumentation Orchestration Playability: The instrumentation is very interesting: With the piano as the foundation and providing the more rhythmic and percussive base, the strings consisting of a cello and violin—thus offering a large ambitus—and the horn and timpani serving as festive and signaling elements, you have a variety of sounds at your disposal to create a piece with different colors. As for playability, I think it would be at least “challenging” and would require a certain degree of virtuosity if performed by human musicians. Execution of Given Challenge: You have clearly mastered the challenge of the contest with excellence! But – and that hurts me to say – not met the rules of the competition. As you stated yourself that you „might’ve gone overboard with the duration“, you are aware of that rule violation. And I can truly understand that, when being in a „flow“ composing, it is sometimes hard to come to the end if there are a number of ideas which have to been expressed. Concerning the huge amount of effort you must have spent to achieve that final result, you’re tempting me to break the rules as well by giving you a score that takes all (other) criteria into account and doesn’t skip your piece due to disqualification. Taste: Even if that genre (let me call it „soundtrack“ or „movie score“) is not my favorite one, I really like it due to it creative ideas and colorfulness. Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 10 5 10 8.5 9.5 10 9 Average Score: 9.0

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 6 8 10 9 8 Average 7.5 Overall a well written piece. The main issue was the structure felt meandering and didn't have much direction to me. The string chords and arco/pizz changes are completely fine, so I gave you a ten there to counter-balance those who said it wasn't good instrument writing lol. Overall, good job!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7 9 7 10 9.5 7 5 8 Average Score: 7.8 Review: This is a very creative piece, starting with the painting (which I love) and the concept. I’m not sure the music in particular evokes that for me, but it’s so subjective... It’s true that the piece goes beyond what was supposedly the challenge. The combination of instruments is original. I think the French horn works well in this ensemble because it has such a powerful projection. Although with virtual instruments, it’s sometimes easy to alter how it would actually sound. There’s a strange shift in style, but I like it. It reminds me of a contemporary opera written in a non-tonal language where, suddenly, everything sounds like jazz. The score is very good, though is there a reason why the piano is printed in a larger font? I also have doubts about those multiple stops, even with techniques like con legno.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 9 9.5 8 7.5 9.5 9 10 9 Average Score: 8.9 Review: Melodies/Themes/Motives - The work is rich in motifs and themes, some of which are readily apparent, whilst others are deeply woven into the fabric of the piece. Harmony/Chords/Textures - The texture is dense, but the individual parts are clearly defined. Form/Development/Structure/Time - I sense a progressive structure, but it’s by no means boring. Originality/Creativity - It is a standard, effective combination. Score Presentation - The score is correct and easy to read. Instrumentation/Orchestration/Playability Reading the comments clears up any doubts about double or multiple stops. Execution of Given Challenge - I think the author has succeeded in achieving his aim.

Thank you for your comment, @Kvothe. In actual practice, a string player will still hold the bow and use the index finger (for violin/viola) to perform pizzicato. That way, they have enough time to switch back to arco. quickly without disrupting the performance, at least from my experience as a violinist. The quadruple stops are also taken care of when I write this piece and should not bring too much of difficulty playing. Most of them are designed and indicated to be played as broken chords for better playability and for intentionally lighter textures. Moreover, open strings are used to make the chord more resonant for better projection. The choice of pizz and arco. depends on the texture - Do I want a richer sound to accompany the main melody? I often consider the sound quality before the playability issue. Nevertheless, the 16th notes are projected better in arco. For the double stops in m.58, they are playable using both A and D strings, with the last note played using the 4th finger to press both strings.