Zetetic

Your composition has certainly improved since last time I visited this site! I really enjoyed this piece. There are moments where it sounds a little odd and sections which were rather harmonically uninteresting, but overall the signs are good.

This got better as it went on - the main problem seemed to be a lack of interesting harmonic motion. Fugues are supposed to make the listener feel like something is rotating; the key is supposed to shift frequently and excitingly to facilitate middle entries.

After much deliberation, Katy, Stephen and I have made our decisions regarding the winners of the competition. If we'd been able to announce a joint first prize, we would have done so, but in the end decided it would be unfair to guarantee two recordings when only one might prove possible. Thus, winners are as follows: First Place: RavingSpleen Runner Up: Nikolas It is my intention to Nikolas' work also over the coming year if at all possible, and hope to have finished a recording of RavingSpleen's entertaining, multiple-movement work for theremin before Christmas. Thank you ever so much to all who entered. I hope you enjoyed composing for the instrument. ~Judges' comments will follow shortly~ (Sorry for the further delay - I'm absolutely swamped by University forms - I leave on Tuesday!)

I am SO sorry not to have judged this competition sooner. I have *not* forgotten about it, but a few life events have prevented my being able to announce a winner. This was also the reason for my total absence from the forum over the last month. I intend to hold true to my word to make a recording, but I daresay it will take longer than expected. The results of the competition will be announced shortly, but since I start University next week, a recording probably won't be on the agenda until nearer Christmas. Once again I apologise. All the entries received were wonderful. If no progress is made, please nag me by PM.

I'm sorry to say I didn't much like this. I certainly think it's a great starting point though. The main criticisms I had were that the subjects were indistinct, the harmonic motion seemed confused, and it wasn't at all obvious when you entered an exposition (that is, the first statements of a subject) Fermion's point is an apt one, and fairly crucial. You need to make it very clear that this is a double fugue from the listener's perspective (having considered SSC's equally apt point about subject compatibility). You can do this in one of two ways: a) Make the two subjects perceptibly different (e.g. give one shorter note values, an interesting head (that is, the part that the listener hears first), perhaps using a memorable leap, staccato... the possibilities are endless) b) Have a clear cadence before the second exposition, perhaps even silence. In the final Contrapunctus of Die Kunst der Fuge, the last written exposition (on the BACH motif) comes after near-total silence. This, coupled with the chromatic nature of the subject makes it obvious that this is another exposition. Have you studied what happens after the exposition in Bach fugues? I found it hard to discern exactly what you were doing. Though there is no cut-and-dried method for fugue writing, there is a sort of identikit toolbox of elements, some more familiar than others. It's probably not helpful to reveal this, but there are no rules that aren't broken in several instances, if not by Bach then by someone like Hindemith. This doesn't mean that structure goes out the window. It means that structure becomes even more important; you, at least, must know precisely what's happening in the composition. To give you a whistle stop tour, the most important element in a fugue is the exposition, since it varies least from fugue to fugue, and is the section of the piece from which almost all the subsequent material is derived/ The basic tenet here is that the fugue subject enters in each voice successively alternating between tonic and dominant in that order (usually!). You managed this, but the lack of harmonic motion was unconvincing; in bars 14-18, for example, nothing really happened. Some of the individual voices were pleasant. After the exposition, pretty much anything at all can happen, defined as musicologists see fit. What always happens in a good fugue however, is the exploitation of the expositionary material. After the exposition, iit's incredibly rare to hear something 'new' (except of course, in a double fugue, or invention-fugue.... etc. etc..). Treating each subject's fugue as a separate entity, there should only ever be brief moments where material from the exposition is not being used to generate the music, most commonly in the 'episodes'. These aren't even necessary in all fugues, and in slower, tortuous fugues they are sometimes undesirable. There aren't as many in Die KDF as there are in Das WTC. In something that lacks harmonic motion however, I say - add them! They'll give you direction. In fact, I suggest you add one between each key idea of your developments (what follows the exposition). Ideas in developments (which you may not have considered as you were writing) should exploit the most memorable parts of the exposition that weren't in free counterpoint (most commonly, the subject!); they include canon at the octave and fifth, use of the melodic inversion either in the manner of an exposition, as countersubject to other preexposed material, or in canon with preexposed material, use of retrograde (rare), use of augmentation (less rare) and use of invertible counterpoint (very common - this involves swapping the register of preexposed material, so that, for example, the bass line works as the tune, and the treble line works as a bass. If you can write your counterpoint to be invertible, the piece will almost write itself. All the catchiest, hummable Bach fugues seem to use this). Hopefully this gives you a few ideas. I suggest you write a simple fugue first, and write a brief passage about how you've generated its structure.

I think that's the way to do it, EldKatt. He'll improve both things that way. Just to clarify, he already *has* perfect pitch, but it takes him several seconds to recall what the name of the note is, due to his lack of theory knowledge.

Thanks for the advice almacg. He already knows all the pitches, and seems always to sing things in the correct key. It just takes him a few seconds to remember their names - his knowledge of theory is rather basic.

Yesterday I made a remarkable discovery; my brother seems to have perfect pitch. He played the trumpet and detested it when he was much younger, then gave up music of most sorts until about a year ago, when he took up the bass guitar. Since then (his fifteenth birthday) it has never left his side. He plays it constantly, and has got (apparently, though I'm not a wonderful judge of this sort of thing) rather good. The thing is, his knowledge of musical theory prior to taking up the instrument, even of note names, was so weak that there'd never have been a reason for anyone to suspect he might have perfect pitch. I first detected something unusual about a year ago, when he regularly complained people were singing things in the wrong key. I did a quick test at the piano, asked him to name the tones, and he couldn't do it. Case closed ... or so I thought. A week ago (after a year of bass guitar playing), we were watching some James Bond films together, having just discovered a CD of all the theme tunes. He claimed nonchalantly that the opening title music (that is, the 'song' for each film) was usually transposed for the titles. In the car, I asked him to sing a C#. I had no idea if it was right or not, but he did it so confidently that I decided it was worth investigating. As soon as we got home, I tried again. He got about 95% of the notes correct, struggling not with identifying the pitches, but remembering what they were called. He could also sing notes at will, and name the notes of intervals, after several seconds of concentrating. How can I help him to hone this skill? How can he hone it himself? I suspect that now he realises he has this ability (or so it seems), and now I've lectured him on how ludicrously amazing it is, he'll take it seriously and start trying to improve it. Up until that moment, he seemed to have assumed it was something everyone could do.

Almost teary eyed at the end of Die Kunst der Fuge. But never quite.

As I've said already, I have little concept of how the American (I assume you're in the States, though I don't recall your having mentioned this) admissions system works. Judging by what you've said however, and the sample of your performance after a year, I have a few simple pieces of advice. Firstly, find a good piano teacher as quickly as possible. You'll get better far, far faster if you have directed guidance from a skilled tutor. Secondly, if you were in England I'd advise you to make this late realisation of your love of music a key feature of your application. If you get the chance to write something in connexion with the application, emphasise that you've made great progress in hardly any time at all, and believe that the directed guidance of such-and-such a course would accelerate all the more this flourishing of talent.... or something along those lines. Bear in mind that not all great composers were childhood geniuses. In fact, to some degree I'd stand by Joseph Schillinger's assertion that 'if you know some young man or woman who, at the age of fifteen, is composing music which is perfect, you can be sure you have a musical corpse before you. And if this still seems paradoxical to you, try to recall that Brahms wrote his first symphony when he was forty.'

I think you need to discuss this with a careers advisor or teachers at your current institution. Without knowing in detail quite how talented you are, the Universities to which you might wish to apply and so on, it's rather difficult to make any sort of judgement. Ultimately, if you know that you would enjoy studying Music at University, this is what I recommend. In England at least there are courses that cater for all abilities; I daresay this is the case in the Americas too. Here admissions tutors will consider candidates by potential ability as well as manifested ability. An experienced interviewer should be able to recognise ability, whatever the level of attainment so far. You will be going to University to learn, after all.

This was too tempting... Split infinitive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Honestly. It's not worth it. It would end up sounding like a kazoo orchestra playing underwater.

I just listened to the track. There's no WAY you'd be able to remove the vocals without totally wrecking the recording. The voices are of a group of children, so they fill the whole acoustic spectrum, they're far louder than the accompaniment, and they're positioned on both tracks. I suggest you record a pleasant MIDI version, get someone to record the piano part or locate a singalong karaoke track (they must be around on the net somewhere).

There are two ways of which I know to remove vocals from a recording, and both operate with varying degrees of success, depending on the recording in question. It must however be remembered at all times that there are no ways to remove vocals from a merged recording that do not seriously reduce the quality of the recording. If the piece is studio-recorded, in stereo, and has been mixed in such a way that the vocals are positioned centrally, then inverting and overlaying the tracks sometimes cancels out the shared frequencies. If this works (and I've had few successes with this method), it works brilliantly. The second method is to use selective equalisation on those parts of the track that contain vocal lines. This is by far the less desirable method, since it cuts out much the the middle-frequencies of the accompaniment. That's fine if it's something like a bass synthesizer, but terrible if it's a string orchestra (which has very similar dominant frequencies to those of the voice)

A note to all entrants: There may be some delays to judging, as I've come down with the flu. The three judges (myself included) aim to have come to a decision by sometime later this week though.

One thing I've found generally with orchestral recordings though is that the oldest are often among the best performed. Furtwangler's early recordings done in the 1940s are absolutely incredible - I assume because the German orchestras of his day were simply far, far, far better than those we hear today.

Ferkungamabooboo, Do you really value originality above beauty? It sounds to me like you're terrified of being forgotten. If you're interested in moving forwards, look back first. The way I perceive things, musical development tends to move in waves of development followed by synthesis. That is to say that a series of generations make lots of breakthroughs which are then consolidated by the final (usually most well-known) set of composers. Bach created no new real forms, but was a brilliant synthesist (I suppose he was something of a 'fusion' artist by modern standards). He combined tight contrapuntal styles with those he had heard from across Europe, and the result was something almost wholly original. I feel we're in for a spell of consolidation now. Music from Mahler to serialism needs reconciling!

JLG, your modesty is astounding! I'm sure the composition will be brilliant, and I'm more than prepared to wait. On a marginally different note, if one looks at other forms of artistic expression, some of the best moments occur when people try (and inevitably fail) to replicate precisely those aspects of the past they most adored. It's what gave us the Renaissance, it's what gave us Victorian neo-Gothic architecture, it's what gave us American neo-Classicism. I am, in fact, hard pressed to find a single piece of architecture I admire that doesn't draw incredibly highly upon precedent. America's third favourite building is actually almost a replica - the Washington State Cathedral.

Mozart wrote lots of stylistically unusual music throughout his career, Bach less so. There are a great number of spurious or contested (mainly keyboard) works by Bach, but most of his vocal and chamber compositions are watermarked with his style within the first few bars. The secular cantatas are some of the most unusual pieces he wrote; the two in Italian are, at least superficially, about as close as close to Opera as Bach got.

"When bitonality strikes!" Seriously though, whenever someone's listening to a jolly piece of music, or whistling happily, and then something else sinister starts playing simultaneously....

So I take it you pronounce it with a soft h, like the Scottish 'loch'?

This might seem like a ludicrous or laughable question, but 'Pack-el-Bell' (to rhyme with "Tackle-Bell") must surely be incorrect. This seems the most common English pronunciation, and is indeed what I've always said, but it doesn't sound remotely German.

It was fairly obvious what he meant, but I'm not sure if I agree that the instrument you learn should dictate what theory you study. It will almost inevitably influence how you perceive musical construction anyway.

The question of period instrumentation is one that rings constantly in my mind. Whilst ultimately the question seems to boil inevitably to one of personal taste despite the gloss of historical justification, I cannot help feeling that both schools of thought can provide brilliant and enjoyable recordings. I can't say a great deal about the performance of Mozart; the performance of late Baroque music is something I've assessed in greater detail. A huge contradiction seems to about in Bach's ensemble writing - that he wrote ardently to conform to the boundaries of each instrument (going so far as to make sure the upper and lower extremities of pieces exploited perfectly the particular harpsichords for which he was writing), yet parodied almost whimsically - he adapted secular music for cantatas, turned a double violin concerto into one for two harpsichords, reduced several orchestral works by Vivaldi for solo harpsichord. The crux here is, I believe, the relevance of the music itself to Bach, rather than simply its expression. That his music survives bizarre transcriptions by everyone from the composer himself to Wendy Carlos is testament to at least one aspect of baroque composition - the importance of part-writing, structure and musical architecture above all else. Beyond a question of personal taste, I have no qualms with Bach being performed at the piano, provided those aforementioned traits are fiercely preserved. The piano can, for example, distort hugely the equal relationship between part-writing through individual dynamic. I detest players who insist upon prescribing the voice to which the audience should listen, thumping out subjects and muting wonderful inner voices. The fact remains that even with something like a clavichord, such effects were not possible on the keyboard instruments of Bach's day. Because Wendy Carlos' transcriptions preserve the counterpoint effectively, they still sound like Bach, even if the timbres are dated and amusing to the modern ear. The inherent difficulties in working with such instruments are, I believe, the central stumbling block to 'modern' performances, and one which for a time made me upset to hear Bach played on the piano. What we must of course bear in mind at all times are the limits of 'period' performance. To believe that we will ever reach a stage of exact replication is ludicrous; a quick look at films made between 1920 and the present day set in Ancient Rome will confirm this. Each is a perfect example of historicism, neatly encapsulating the prevailing zeitgeist. What we will produce however is a broad and thrilling spectrum of different recordings, and this is the most wonderful aspect of the period performance debate.