Leaderboard

This is a very informal competition. Usually, in a formal competition we would have dedicated judges who used judging criteria and scoring definitions. But, then, if they were a judge they would not be allowed to participate in the competition themselves. And the submissions would also have to be kept anonymous to stave off any impression of favoritism. But since, ultimately, this competition is just a fun challenge without monetary rewards, we decided to do away with all that formality. But, we would be honored if you (or everybody really) donated their very valuable time to review the music submitted in as detailed a way as you feel is necessary and appropriate! AND, if you review all the participant's works you get an "Ardent Reviewer" badge which everyone will be able to see in your profile! In previous, formal competitions we used the following scoring definitions: And the following scoring categories: It would honor us if you (or anybody who feels up to the challenge) used these categories and definitions to review the pieces submitted! Thank you for whatever time and effort you're willing to give!

Dude you're perfect for youtube, and I think you reach an audience that helps people find how great "classical" music is. Your editing is great, and you're pretty funny. I'm excited to hear you mentioning your original work too, that'll be great for your channel. Awesome stuff, you've got a great personality in your videos!

i'll join i guess.

I do hereby proclaim mine intent to partake in this noble contest.

I declare my intent to participate in this competition.

LoL what are all these Spanish!

Because it's not a passing chord. The type of 6/4 record refers to what the bass is doing. In this case, the E in the bass isn't a "passing" tone (i.e., it's not approached by step and left by step in the same direction), so it isn't a passing 6/4 chord. Now, the third chord in m. 3 is technically a correct passing chord, but odd because it's minor (although minor v's aren't uncommon passing chords) and the aforementioned poor voice spacing. Minor v chords definitely exist, but—in America, at least—you're just taught to always raise the leading tone in minor unless otherwise marked through figured bass. V would indeed have a B-natural, but your use of the minor v, at least where I teach, in and of itself would be suspect. Any diminished or augmented interval in the upper voices is forbidden (unless extremely niche circumstances I won't cover here). If you did make the alto a B-natural in m. 3, it would become an augmented fifth, which is augmented, so it's not permitted. I mean, I'm sure there's music that ends in IV like some sort of plagal half cadence, but for harmony exercises, we really only deal with Half Cadences, Perfect Authentic Cadences, and Imperfect Authentic Cadences, with plagal extensions and deceptive cadences as ways to lengthen a progression, not end one. Ending a phrase in IV is really odd because it's functioning as predominant, which implies there should be a dominant somewhere in there. Note your wording. Authentic cadences resolve to tonic. Half cadences merely end on the dominant. Most phrases and pieces end on tonic because they "feel" resolved. I'm not explaining it in detail here, but 6/4 chords were considered the most unstable because of a remnant from Renaissance-style practice where creating a fourth between the lowest sounding note and any upper voice was a huge problem. So we only use passing, neighbor, pedal, and cadential 6/4s because 6/4 chords are dissonances and need to be treated as such. The fact that you have two 6/4 chords in a row in m. 3 is wrong because you have two dissonant chords in a row, prevents proper resolution. To be clear, all of this is only true in terms of doing exercises. Exceptions in the repertoire exist all the time.

Hi there! I am a new guy after being recommended to come here by UncleRed99, I would like to participate in this spooky contest as well. Consider this my declaration.

aight im in

also playing technically a sonata no.4 aka the cello sonata as the piano part is harder than the cello part

My Repertoire Solo Piano: Wanderer Fantasy Op.15 by Franz Schubert Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit M.55 by Maurice Ravel Sonata No.3 in B Minor Op.58 by Frederyk Chopin Concertos: Piano Concerto in E minor Op.11 by Frederyk Chopin

Aw that's super sweet of youuu Thank you very much One of my goals when starting this channel was exactly that, to get people to actually sit down and listen to the "nerdy" classical music, because it's SO GOTDAMN GOOD PEOPLE ARE MISSING OUT

I really love The Nutcracker Suite, or "Waltz of the Flowers" by Tchaikovsky to be fair, I often times am very bored in class, maybe I'll get one of those notebooks that have a staff in them, and print out a piece or two, and just sit down and write them thank you for your words of advice!

You must have orchestral pieces that you really like? Maybe even, like, film scores or musical theater scores? When I first got started soooooo long ago, I would spend hours listening, replaying, transcribing, and writing everything that I heard. And holy hell, I definitely got better because I was engaging my brain in piecing everything together. Copying note-for-note is alright (as long as you're listening alongside it), but transcribing it arguably even better. And, bonus, you get to practice transcription too! But yeah, basically, don't be so beholden to the original work, is my biggest advice. There's a reason that every collegiate composition course in the world has you take a very, very short piano miniature and orchestrate it. I remember my class took Ligeti's Musica ricercata, II., and orchestrated it. Super short, and literally only three notes. It was hard. But with practice—and creativity—it all comes together.

thank you very much! I've actually heard of this method of litterally writing down by hand existing works, and even have done it a few times, sadly I really don't think I'll have the time in the near future to write down an entire orchastral score I'd definetly go over his version and study it though, thank you for the kind comment

So, you should take a look at probably the most famous orchestration of this piece by Caplet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DB8rBvyPoE And I'm gonna suggest something really boring, but if you have an extra few hours, I'd go and like copy all of this—like, note for note. By hand, if you can, just to get it in your hands and brain what instruments go where and what they're best at doing (possibly even better if you try to transcribe it, then check your work). You've got some pretty good foundations for what makes an orchestral work tick, which is a great start (e.g., you mention adding more instruments to make the piece feel fuller), but you'll notice that there are so many times where what's written deviates from the piano score. Like at 3:05, when the main theme comes back in, Caplet adds these gorgeous violin solo notes to add chord pitches (that aren't even in the original!), a sustained note in a sing-song register, and serve as counterpoint. Also, going into 3/4 in half the orchestra at 1:00, while everyone else stays in 9/8? What a cool effect! And the best part is, you'll get to see where you and he align on your choices! For example, at 3:08, you actually agreed that double flutes would work, but I believe you changed it to flute and clarinet in the final version of yours. It's worth taking the opportunity here to also improve standard notation practices. Like in the first measure, in 9/8 you can't actually have any half notes because 9/8 is representing triplet compound meter, so three dotted half notes need to be visually represented. Little things like that go a long way. You have a good budding ear for what makes orchestral works sound so pretty and grand, but you can take this opportunity to really reinforce that knowledge with score study and practice. The theory of it doesn't really matter (lessons on acoustics and stuff have always been super boring to me); what matters is knowing what things pair well and knowing when to use those tools. Best of luck and keep at it.

this on the other hand I do somewhat appreciate , I still don't think you should be calling anybody's work cringe, even if it absolotly is, but I do appreciate you pointing out the fact I'm not really learning anything new in those videos, because I do strive to learn and improve. my next video is planned to be an original composition, with that reason being one of the reasons I chose to switch the style up a bit. with that being said again it's a youtube video sometimes people just do nonsense on youtube videos that's also fine as long as they're having fun which I was.

Hello everyone, I’d like to share my piece Fumage for flute, oboe, and bassoon as my submission for the Fall 2025 Halloween Competition. 🎃 About the Piece Fumage is inspired by the surrealist art technique of the same name, where smoke from a candle or lamp leaves ghostly, shifting impressions on paper. This piece takes that imagery into sound, with wisps of timbre, sudden bursts, and eerie colorations from the woodwinds. It mirrors candlelight, smoke, and the blurred line between reality and apparition—an atmosphere that fits the surreal and haunting spirit of Halloween. Instrumentation: Flute, Oboe, Bassoon Duration: ~7 minutes Score (PDF) Audio (MIDI) Thanks for listening and I welcome any feedback! –– Justin Gruber

Hi again @Tunndy! I've watched all your "orchasrations" so far and I have to ask: are you learning anything from this process? It seems like all you're doing is importing midi's of the piano pieces into an orchestra template and copying and pasting the different parts into various instruments, essentially just doubling the parts, mostly in the same register as the original. But there's so much more to orchestration. In your orchestrations, you always include the piano part in the final finished orchestration, but I think a real test of whether you can effectively turn piano pieces into orchestra pieces would be if you excluded the piano from the orchestration. Let's see if the orchestration can stand on its own, without the piano! There were plenty of opportunities in this piece to use the string orchestra really dynamically, to create something that is quite different from the original piano piece. Like when Debussy stacks the F and Ab dyads in various registers, each an octave higher than the previous: I think you could have used the string orchestra really dynamically here by using the Violas, 2nd Violins, and 1st Violins to sustain those dyads and create a rich chord. That's just one example. But I don't think you're learning any of these techniques with the way you're orchestrating these pieces. And, honestly, I find your "orchastration" videos kinda cringe. 😕 Thanks for sharing though and if you do learn something from doing this then by all means, keep going!

Hello, sorry, I thought the platform translated, here it is in English: Hello, I'm sharing my piece for string quartet, "Clowns," inspired by a group of killer clowns having fun on Halloween. I'd like to clarify that the audio is MIDI, as the piece wasn't recorded. It should be around 3.30 minutes long, this one a little faster. Best regards!

"Hello, I'm sharing my piece for string quartet, "Clowns," inspired by a group of killer clowns having fun on Halloween. I'd like to clarify that the audio is MIDI, as the piece wasn't recorded. It should be around 3.30 minutes long, this one a little faster. Best regards!"

Excelente trabajo, ¡sigue así! 😀 (Bienvenido = welcome (singular) | Bienvenidos = welcome (plural)) ¡Genial! Ánimo con ello y bienvenido al foro Sebastián. Si tienes cualquier consulta, no dudes en escribirnos al privado, preguntar por el chat, o en este mismo hilo. ¡Un saludo!

Hola quiero participar

Very few composers really knew how to write for cello. Only a handful of famous composers even composed famous cello pieces. This will be an effort to bring more information to composers and hopefully have more memorable repertoire. Consider the cello as four instruments, the A string is somewhat harsh in the low positions but in the high positions, it soars like a soprano. It's somewhat oboe-like The D string is where most music intended to be played on the A string really is played as the notes are less harsh. The G string is the warmest and most soulful part of the cello, especially in a higher position. The C string is dark in the lower positions and almost comical up in the high positions, although it is scarcely heard. This string is quite like a bassoon along with the G string. This effectively makes the cello the most resonant in G keys. Double stops with open strings are most abundant in keys around G. for example, D is the only key where closed position triple-stops can be used somewhat freely (only major and minor chords are shown)

@Kvothe thank you for your reply! looking back at this piece, I agree, there's some lack in variance in the melody on m. 21 I wasn't actually trying to imitate chopin in that spesific part if I remember correctly, but yeah I feel you, this would be hard to do

I declare my intent to participate in the competition (Copied from @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu hehe)

Hi @Tunndy! I quite like the loud passage in 0:48. The sound in 1:18 doesn't sound realistic enough, though I love the effect there. The melody is quite memorable. Thx for sharing! Henry

Cool! I won't follow and make any template then since they make this fun comp less fun!

No - you can review the pieces the way you usually do. Or you can make a new template for yourself with completely different categories and on a completely different scale/point system. It's all up to you!

Do we have to follow this template when we review in order to have our reviews counted?

I am joining this competition: I can be a judge. 🙂

Entrance here. I am in.

Hello again, my friends. Here is the latest sonata in Binary form that I’ve written. From a technical point of view, I believe it’s my best one, and I feel quite happy about it. Musically, like every piece, it’s different and has its own beauty. I hope you like it.

I'm glad you did! For me, I was going to have those reactions anyway, but obviously I'll have a different perspective. It's great we get to share potential reasons for feeling differently. Don't get me wrong; it's an incredibly smooth little sequence! It's actually possible that I thought it almost needed to stand out more, in a way, you know? Like the character is so different I might have wanted to hear it be a little wilder to reinforce that in my brain, you know? Not entirely sure. Kudos, again. Lovely stuff.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time and care to listen to my work so attentively — I truly feel grateful for that. I’m really glad you liked it and appreciated the effort I put into it. Also, thank you very much for your feedback. If you’d like, I can share my own perspective on the points you mentioned. At 2:40, since there was a modulation to B major with the initial theme — and because of its nature, it didn’t really lead anywhere — the only way forward was through a series of modulations, starting with C-sharp minor. Then somehow, in a dynamic way, I had to wage a sort of “battle” of modulations to find my way back to the tonic. From my point of view, that section is actually one of my favorites; it just felt like it needed to happen that way. At 2:49, I wanted to keep that drone note more as a timbral element and to add a more dramatic texture due to the constant alternation between major and minor. From a technical standpoint, you could say it’s nothing particularly special — it’s really more about the color I wanted to convey. In general, I truly enjoy hearing everyone’s perspective and how each person approaches the piece with their own unique viewpoint — it’s very interesting. Once again, thank you, my friend, for your kind words and appreciation. Wishing you all the best!

Wow, this is so pretty! I think my favorite thing about this are all these little moments that play with different dissonances: a. 0:21 holding onto the 7th into the EEC, b. 0:49 on the French 6th, technically resolving to V, bit leaving immediately after the silence. c. 3:32 holding onto fi. Maybe not unique per se, but treated with such a light touch that they really pop here! Good job! Only a couple sections I felt were a bit of a bigger change: 1. 2:40's sequence felt a little odd to me for some reason. It's a big moment, for sure, but maybe the sequence was just so rhythmically formulaic that it contrasted the unpredictable pleasantness of the rest of the piece enough to be marked for me. 2. 2:49's repeat of the low octave feels a little heavy-handed as well, but I get that you want to make the home key a little stronger after all the work you put into modulating. 3. Right at the very end, just a personal taste kinda gripe: going from 8 to 3 to 1 (scale degrees) in your highest voice feels like it's missing the 5, even though this is not an uncommon gambit. I actually quite liked the i chord with the third in the top voice because it balanced out the high SD 8. Obviously, all of the above are just personal taste things. This is a really excellently crafted work!

This one was intended as a kind of character piece. Honestly, I was watching the new season of Wednesday Addams and the music from the show inspired this. LoL There's dynamics in this that hopefully a Clavichord would be better able to perform. Thanks to @Alex Weidmann for his input about how to get the Violin to play classic phrasing rather than portamento! I would appreciate any kind of feedback, comment, critique, suggestion or observation that you may have. Thanks for listening and I hope that you enjoy!

Thx bro! I don't know why I wrote like this then but I did. The fugato is quite an unsuccessful attempt; I was not that good at counterpoint then! If this piece is written by me now, I would defintitely cut the whole fugato section out since it is totally unnecessary to retain it. For the harmonies, when I wrote those neapolitan harmonies I didn't even know the term "Neapolitan Sixrh" lol! Henry

Yeah, because I have just finished listening the 129 examples of the Sonata book I have read, and before writing the Adorned Zither Piano Pieces I have some energy left to review something! I think this one is more in major mode simply because the mood is more light hearted and joyful! And Schubert always did that by giving some slight hope in major mode before returning to minor which makes the tragedy more tragic, thus the minor quality more strongly. Henry

Dear Henry, First of all, I’m glad to see you again after such a long time, and I always look forward to hearing your new compositions, which are truly remarkable. Thank you very much for your kind words. From a technical point of view, I consider this sonata to be my best work so far. As for the modulations — being the greatest admirer of Schubert, who along with Mozart is my favorite composer — moving from one tonality to another is something that haunts me in a pleasant way, of course, and I feel it’s one of the great tricks that helps me evolve each time. This sonata may be in C minor, but it carries a touch more of the major mode — and when it returns to the minor, that minor character is heard even more intensely. Personally, I tend to feel the minor quality more strongly when it emerges within a major key rather than purely in a minor one. I don’t know, maybe that sounds unorthodox or strange, but that’s the feeling it gives me. Once again, thank you for your kind words.

Let's go. I'll try. Deadline a bit bad to me but I'm sure something can be done.

I'm a little confused. If everything's decided via popular poll, what exactly are the criteria for "judging"? For instance, do I need to spend a lot of time on a score? Will I be be viewed less favorably if my audio recording is just standard MIDI? The competition idea is exciting, but don't know where I need to focus my time if I were to join.

@Justin Gruber is the first participant to have submitted music! Listen to it here:

Movement 1 Another Stravinsky styled piece... Anyways, my favourite part was bar 11 to 30. The rhythm sometimes is random, but feels like poco accelerando. I saw a cadenza at bar 37 and 45 to 46. I like the chromatic feel. As Omicron said, you have a lack of dynamics and not enough moments that are not tutti. You should add more of these. In contrast with Omicron, I believe the ending made perfect sense. It is also late, here, so I will continue later. Please be patient.

Is this homework? Or just self-study? Hopefully not the former lol Assuming you're studying both voice-leading and harmony, there are a lot of problems, but the foundations are there! All of your chords have all the chord tones present, which is a great start and, for the most part, you correctly identified your non-chord tones. Measure 1: a. Get in the habit of putting serif lines on all of your major Roman numerals. Most teachers will mark you down if they just see a v because they can't tell if it's major or minor. b. No retrogressions: in the first measure, your V (dominant) chord goes to ii˚6 (predominant), which isn't allowed. I've attached a chord chart for you. c. @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu is right. Leading tones in the outer voices must resolve up to the tonic in the next chord. d. This bar has five beats in it, despite the 4/4 meter. e. And, yes, Henry's also right that your neighbor tone creates a parallel fifth against the alto. Measure 2: a. Your first V6 chord's tenor moves down to the seventh (F) as a passing tone, and sevenths must ALWAYS resolve down, so it should go to E-flat in the next chord, which it doesn't. b. Same issue with leading tones in the outer voices, but this time in the bass. The B-natural should move up to C, which fixes the issue @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu mentioned about avoiding 6/4 chords unless they're serving one of the four functions he mentioned. c. The tenor is only three beats long. Measure 3: a. Bit of a large leap from G to C in the soprano, but this isn't a huge deal. Technically doesn't break any rules, except we want to see it resolve in the opposite direction of the leap. b. The first 6/4 chord here isn't passing, neighboring, pedal, or cadential. If your 6/4 chord requires a leap either in or out, chances are it's not correct, unless it's cadential. c. The second 6/4 chord here is technically passing, but wrong to be coming out of another 6/4 chord. d. No minor v's (yes, minor v's exist, but students are taught to avoid them). If you did make the B-flat a B-natural, you still have a problem because the alto has to leap by an augmented or diminished interval, which is not allowed. Measure 4: a. I think you're misunderstanding what a plagal cadence is: the piece should still end on i, but approached by iv, not ending on iv. Plagal cadences aren't really a thing anyways... long story, but they're more often extensions to previous cadences. I would stick to HCs, PACs, and IACs, unless you're explicitly trying to work with plagal motion. b. End on a root-position chord, not a 6/4. c. The last two beats of this bar have too big of a space between the tenor and alto. Voices should be no more than an octave apart from each other, except for the bass relative to the tenor. There's a reason why students HATE learning this stuff, because it feels arbitrary, and it is. Useful in some cases, for sure, but very arbitrary. You should be proud that you're trying to learn a very niche and difficult thing. Keep at it!

Hi @Kian, Welcome to the forum! On the exercise, there’s a parallel 5th in b.1 for alto and tenor. The B natural in b.2 bass should go up to C instead of downward to G. Also be careful of the usage of second inversion chords. Mainly the 6 4 chords are for cadential, passing or neighbouring, but except the V 64 chords are for in b.3 all the other second inversion chords aren’t used properly, esp. the end! At least in SaTB setting the cadence would end on a second inversion chords! Thx for joining us! Henry

Don't think I would've attempted to orchestrate (or-castrate) this sonata; but looks like you had fun with it! I'd love to hear this with the piano part muted.

Scotland actually, and it's Nessie! 🤪😂

@Churchcantor and @TristanTheTristan please refer to this forum etiquette and code of conduct: