The Dance of Untruth (piano and orchestra)

There is a point after box 46 where the 1st clarinet has to hold an F - yes, still in the playable range of the instrument (as are all the notes written for all 3 of your trumpet parts), but I think it's a matter of stamina. An Eb Clarinet would much rather be used there, and the sound I'm sure would be better throughout that passage, as it requires less air to play that on the smaller instrument. The trumpets use all their range equally in this piece, and constantly jumping up to Bbs and Bs I think would prove difficult. That's all I meant regarding range issues, perhaps a little to high in their playable register too often.

Oh, and I hope you get the rights to turn Delores Clairborne into an opera! Do you have an opera company you are working with currently?

Sadly, Dolores Claiborn is already being negotiated by another composer, so that has fallen through.

I do have a librettist I will be meeting with over the next few months, regarding an idea for an original opera.

As for the production, it will pass through the production company that Alan Belkin and I have started. I have a couple of excellent groups in mind for the performance along with some excellent singers interested in participating.

Okay...

I promised to return after having listened to this some more, and indeed, that I have done. And all I can honestly say is this - I do, indeed, love this piece of music very much, and find some of the more telling piano passages (like from the cadenza) playing through my mind every now and again, but... this is still so very far beyond my scope of analytical understanding. I hear the interwoven themes here and there, but I can't put what I think of it into words, if you know what I mean. In short, I'm admitting that I need to further my studies. A lot.

That said, I shall keep this piece in mind as I study more and more of the more modern side of theory (I'm still such a Classicist / Romanticist). It has intrigued me, and re-inspired me to pursue musical education as far as I can. For that, I must thank you, seeing as I've been going through kind of a rocky time with my own musical motivation.

But, I'm not going to get all sappy on you here.

Merci bien d'avoir

QCCowboy:

Im going to start my comment in character of an untrained listener, one that has just been introduced to a very dissonant work.

*gets into Character*

OH MY EFFING GOSH! THAT WAS EFFING TERRIFIC YOU EFFING SON OF A B! OH MY GOSH.

Ok now that is out (obviously, effing and B stand for tabboo terms, but I dont think swearing is healthy)

Now into a proper, trained musician train of thought:

I was absolutely impressed by this fantastic collaboration of harmony, rhythm, motifs and sound! What an incredible feat of music this is. Absolutely fantastic. Your pianistic writing absolutely astounded me; there weren't any passages in there that I saw that seemed impossible to play. Everything was so meticulously crafted; so much detail. I mean, 8 years of work and revision would obviously bring this, but that 8 years has CERTAINLY paid off.

GPO is what im guessing you used, and surprisingly it did a fantastic job of portraying your work, give or take volume control. You look like you have really mastered finale/sibelius/whatever you use as well, as the score is tidy, and playback is marvelous. I would love to see your creation progress...see how you do everything you do.

Now in regards to analysis, there were a few things I picked up. Obviously, this work is complete, and so whatever I am saying would be applied to a latter piece.

I read what you posted, saying it was a Symphonic Poem with Piano Obligato, so a lot of the notes I took down during listening to the piece are contradicted by this statement. However, I will say them anyway:

Piano Concerto: In piano concertos we hear, particuarly those of a traditional stance, we hear throughout the piece, piano solos in between. I didnt hear/see much of these. It was as if the orchestra was constantly moving, and the piano would come in and just...add to the already thick texture. The mixing of the recording obviously didnt really bring out the 'ff' over the orchestra's 'f', and a live recording would see acoustics and all that stuff, changed...but I thought that some of the impressive piano passages you wrote were covered completely in a thick cover of other instruments. The virtuoso on the stage would be destroying his/her hands tearing out these massive passages, only to have the orchestra drown them out.

I am contradicted by Rachmaninov's 2nd Concerto here, where near at the end of the first movement and the third movement, there are tremendous chords hammered out in triplets building to a massive climax, along with the orchestra shouting out the climax as well...yet the piano is playing a rhythm that makes it heard out over the orchestra.

I dont know, it is YOUR piece so you can do what you want with it. It is probably exactly what you wanted, I just feel that you would be wasting the pianist's energy putting 'Sorabji-like' passages underneath a thick layer of instruments.

Now, I did notice however that you 'took this into thought' at bars 169 - 201. The piano was playing running passages while the orchestra was mumbling a melody out beneath. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the piece, giving you Kudos for writing so well for the piano.

To sum up this paragraph, I would like to draw attention to the cadenza. Again, what a fantastic showmanship of years of work...it is a brilliant 47 bars of music...however, again, its saved for just the cadenza. There were so many moment in this cadenza I thought, 'oh that would have sounded nice earlier in thepiece' or 'why is that here, and not at the beginning?'. A fantastic cadenza, of passages that could have been spread out more. Thats all for that. I thought the entrance of the orchestra with the piano playing that tremdous scale down the keyboard at bar 325 reminded me SOO much of a Mahler symphony (particuarly the 1st one, movement 4 - DONT CONTRADICT ME 'MAHLER FOLLOWERS', this is my opinion). It's fantastic, and I know it is YOUR passage, but I just had a 'mahler' thought in that bar.

Im not a master of Orchestration, so I wont say anything about that, except at the end (bar 418 - 420)...BRILLIANT CLIMAX TO AN END OF A PIECE. I can imagine those old men in the audience yelling out 'Bravo!'...you know, the ones you hear in those live classical recordings...'bravo bravo'.

With that, I leave...100 Kudos for this fantastic work. I would upload it to my MP3 player, but then I will start composing in that style...and whats worse, my piece will sound like yours, which defeats the purpose of trying to establish my own musical ideas. Can't stain the imagination. I will definately be looking out for a live performance recording sometime though :P of which, I will undoubtedly add to my "Great YC Compositions" folder on my computer.

Amazing.

There is a point after box 46 where the 1st clarinet has to hold an F - yes, still in the playable range of the instrument (as are all the notes written for all 3 of your trumpet parts), but I think it's a matter of stamina. An Eb Clarinet would much rather be used there, and the sound I'm sure would be better throughout that passage, as it requires less air to play that on the smaller instrument. The trumpets use all their range equally in this piece, and constantly jumping up to Bbs and Bs I think would prove difficult. That's all I meant regarding range issues, perhaps a little to high in their playable register too often.

*above G6, you're in a new series of partials, which are much harder to control

Yeah, I guess you're right about the range issues. It's just a matter of what the composer wants, then. I tend to be a little conservative with issues of difficulty in individual parts, I guess!

WOW!

I can't believe I have never heard this!!! FANTASTIC!!

This rightly deserves a bump for the simple fact that I want others who have never heard this beautiful work of art to give it a listen.

MARVELOUS!!

I'm glad somone bumped this.

I am drolling over the harmonies throughout this piece it makes me cringe in delight!

Thank You QC for what my two cents are worth.

Well I guess I shall be the dissenting opinion and say:

I didn't like it!

No doubt that musically it is very good but it's not to my taste. No solid harmonic foundation and too much chromatic stuff.

Thankyou TG and Meaning.

Justin, I just don't now what to say. OK, I can understand "too chromatic" which is a subjective thing. I don't generally like pointillistic music myself , so we each have our likes and dislikes.

But "no solid harmonic foundation"? I'm afraid I just don't know how to react to that comment. If by that you mean that it doesn't follow common practice harmonic patterns, then, yup, gotta agree with you. It's not technically "tonal", or at least, not developed tonally. It's cellular. In other words, much of the music is actually extension and expansion of brief cels of notes. Sort of like 12-tone music.. but with fewer tones! :P (though to be fair, technically, the main theme IS a tone row)

To clarify, it's not tonal. And yes, I'm thinking quite subjectively here.

QC -

This is my reaction to the first part:

From the posts and chats and from this work I am a bit underqualified to make coomments on your craft -- it is a very professional work and interesting melange of styles - hear the Prokofiev-Bartok pole as well as some minimalistic procedures which give it a cross between a mid 20th century/neoclassical/impressionistic feel ( speaking of around measure 230 - 250 approx for the latter 2). Love your string writing and use of percussion. Favorite bars were 1-6, 17 - 24, 31 - 33, 177 - 184 (especially the detache piano accomp w/ orchestra, wonderful) - those really stood out for me

Overall, enjoyed the piece but not as excited about it as some of the others. For a number of reasons.

1) The mix of styles does work often. Once in awhile though the style shifts a bit suddenly. For example, measure 7 felt harmonically it didn't belong because of the root movement from C major to f minor and the sudden change of chord spacing. It really could have been amended with a slight blur, maybe the f sharp or e flat lingering over as a suspension and/or a less open spacing?

A more nagging stylistic problem for me is the time spent on the ostinato figure in its original form was too long. I would have welcomed more permutations of it -- in fact, with a sufficient break after 163, this could be a larger movement than it is. Also, but to a lesser extent, the slow shift away from the ostinato figure that starts around msrs 230 - 250 one point sounded a little forced. In particular msr 246 - 247 with the brass. The sudden outburst is a great idea however the articulation I would prefer shorter - staccatto for more of it and maybe a little thinner spacing.

2) The piano writing is very good overall. I think the octave texture recurs too often at times. I wish I could specify exact measure but I will say this occurs more in the first half (say before 165). There is one spot where I wonder if the pianist will be heard over the orchestra -- msr 174 -175. Piano didn't come through well in the sound file.

3) I also thought the orchestration was excellent with one quibble that it got a little thick for my tastes --- I noticed pedal points and drones for underpinning appeared quite often throughout which at times (esp before msr 163) would have benefited from a more shifting bassline or even phased in more gently. Granted after 163 you have this often but the articulation of the piano and uppervoices is often detache along with the light timbre and tessitura this works very well and gives it necessary support. Part of this could just be the sound file as so much detail is revealed that the piece sounded cluttered at times. I would love to hear a live performance as the balance. With live musicians and a good conductor and pianist this would not be a problem. Of course this is expensive, unless you can get a school or great local orchestra to do this.

So, in sum about the 1st part, mostly small isues with the stylistic melange being something that doesn't seem to work as well for my tastes.

Have you written another piano concerto? If not I hope you do soon. Would like to hear where you are stylistically as this piece sounds as if you were at a crossroad (more than just depictin ghte search for consonance as you wrote in an earlier entry) in your work about your stylistic direction and what wells you wished to draw from at that time.

QC -

Ok, Part 2 -

Excellent work and far more consistent and the balance is much stronger than Part 1. My only complaint -- too, too short and it sounds like it was the start and end of a new extremely promising piano concerto. If you could take some of the development procedure you did from 1 - 165 and employ them with the thematic material (or combine with the section from Part 1) you'd have a great concerto. Granted the style may be a bit conservative but the structure would be fantastic and a very convincing work.

As for the pseudo minimalistic ostinato figure from Part 2, it could be employed but as one element of several others. Just had an odd thought, why not do a Steve Reich like experiment where you take the opening piano theme from Part 1 (msr 1-3, I think) create an ostinato over the one in the 2nd section of Part 1 using phasing as well as more traditional variation techniques to develop the material. or (another possibly source of material the string fugato/canon that starts oin Part 1 -- cannot recall the measure number.

This work is officially 20 years old this year, so I won't be revisiting it yet another time. Thanks for the comments, however.

Agreed on leaving the piece alone. And I didn't realize it was 20 years old -- I thought it was 8 years old. Misread the posts.

Still, there is a great source of material to pull from for new works.

Hehe, no it was composed 20 years ago, but reworked more recently. Mostly orchestration.

I doubt I would revisit any of the material in the concerto. It uses tone rows more heavily than I would in any of my more recent compositions. Also, my harmonic language has evolved considerably since then.

Well, do keep us apprised when you have a new concerto. By the way, look forward to hearing your liturgical piece you are working on (for Christmas I believe) when you have a recording. That must be a fun project!

Well, do keep us apprised when you have a new concerto. By the way, look forward to hearing your liturgical piece you are working on (for Christmas I believe) when you have a recording. That must be a fun project!

hehehhe, yeah. I can hardly wait as well.. sadly, I will not be able to post a recording. It's a professional ensemble, and as such, union rules forbid any re-diffusion of the recording. :(

I MIGHT be allowed to post excerpts. I presume I'll know once it's done.