"Fanfare" for Concert Band

Hello,

This is the first piece that I have posted here in awhile. I have been doing an independent study at my high school in music composition, which has ended with this work for my school band to play in our concert next thursday. I realize it is too late to make revisions for this concert, but I will be submitting it to a competition in Texas in a few months, so any helpful comments/ideas will be appreciated.

This piece is essentially a celebration. It goes by fairly quickly, and is mostly upbeat. The form is a very basic Intro-A-B-A-Coda.

Enjoy!

Fanfare.mus

Fanfare.mid

Fanfare.pdf

If I have time, I'll comment more this weekend, but here's a brief run-through.

Lots of errors in notation (measure 1, 3 quarter rests and then 2 eighth notes? Use a half rest, then 1 quarter), lots of score collisions, inconsistent articulations, and unnecessary score elements. You mark solos/solis and then don't mark where everyone in the section is supposed to come back in.

The instrumentation is unclear (2 clarinet parts, but the 1st is always divided? How many horn/trumpet parts? 2? 3?).

There are a lot of muddy bass clef chords, and that makes me think you're a pianist, or composed this at the piano. These will not sound good when played by actual wind/brass instruments, it will be thick, muddy, and may even sound like wrong notes.

The Timpani part is impractical and in my opinion too low... it looks like it's for 4 drums but the range you've written them in would have all the drums the same size (which doesn't happen...).

Page 4, Bassoon. Bassoons do not use the alto clef. They might be able to read tenor clef if the player is at a very good high school level of experience or higher, but otherwise, use bass clef.

Same page, Euphonium/Horns... why is there a caesura there? No one else has one.

From C to D, it look like you did a 4 measure drum break, and then straight out copy/pasted the opening measures of the piece. Copy/paste == bad!

The last three measures are very weak, and will probably not come off well. The flutes are poorly scored in an unassertive register. Thankfully the bells will probably at least be audible.

As a general encompassing statement, the background parts are boring. Just plain boring. There's nothing beside melody and background. No counter-melody, no inner moving lines, nothing interesting to catch the ear.

You could improve this piece a lot with some work. You just need to use more depth to it and be less two-dimensional.

Good luck!

Thanks for the comments.

I should probably explain the inconsistency in parts; I kind of personalized this piece for my high school's band. Our low brass section isn't exactly filled with all-star players so I didn't want to put anything too difficult down there. It is pretty boring but I'd rather it be boring then sound terrible in the concert. I also hadn't realized that the alto and tenor clefs are separate things.

Anyways, thanks for listening and the comments!