Fantasy for piano and Orchestra

I am deeply impressed with the level of density. The fluidity of melody/harmony. Your structure is impeccible.

Your ideas are incredibly agile and most intelligent.

You understand composition without compromise even though you state that you are still searching for your voice.

It's been a real pleasure sir...

Gorgeous work! The word effortless immediately comes to mind. The melody, harmony, and structure just grow organically and flow so well... very impressive. Congratulations.

Brilliant Composition. Impeccable development, if that is the right word between 3:35 to 4:15.

thanks for the piece

This is a seriously respectable piece. I'm not sure where to place it inside my mind in terms of music history...Not contemporary, too familiar sounding for that. But...not exactly the kind of level of musical comprehension expected from a 24-year-old. If you can write this now (meaning that you already have the stamina for large-scale works)...i can't see why you shouldn't soon find your own voice and perhaps write something very original. The amount of talent that this requires...is way above average.

You said somewhere that the contemporary music doesn't express you very well. So i thought perhaps i should tell you this wisdom (from a very wise girl): key to success is not making new things...but old things in a new way. That simple sentence explained everything to me...also why the contemporary music is frowned upon :).

When i begin to study orchestral music i will definitely return to see your style of orchestration as i will probably learn quite a bit from it.

Good luck!!!

Piko?

Where are you? We are all waiting your return! At least in this thread!

Hey everyone,

I apprecaite all of your comments on my piece! I am sorry i haven't been able to personally respond to all of them I recently had finals and plus my laptop has been in the shop so I haven't had a lot of time lately. I also hope to have more time to make comments on all of the pieces that everyone else posts since you have been so gracious with me. I do have another question concerning this piece that I could use your help on. I know the score is not in tip-top shape....however I thought it didn't look too bad! So what are specific things that I could do? Especially as I prepare to submit my works to grad schools and things like that.

By the way...I use Finale

Piko, I will take a look at the score and have some comments. I can't give you full details about spelling etc, since it would take forever to note down, but I hope to be able to help!

I'll contact you later on this week.

hey Nikolas,

on a lot of the spellings I spelled the chords so that the parts would be easier to read for some parts like Bb descending to A instead of A# descending to A. But i guess thats not kosher?! i dunno...

With a fast look I had in my break:

1. The score looks tiny! I know that this will be hard work, and probably your conductor prefered the full score, but maybe condensed would be better? I mean half the orchestra is not playing half the time, you could just delete the staves which don't play. It will save loads of space and also provide an opportunity to enlarge your page %. If you are printing in A4 pages, I'd say don't go bellow 50% or even 55%. I printed off a page and it is tiny! Your supervisor and examiners will have trouble looking at such pages.

It won't be easy, but... I think it will be worth it.

2. Some things are do cramped that collide with each other. page 11, for example, the trumpets. They are simply too close together.

If you do change page %, you WILL HAVE TO move bars here and there. Don't worry about page turning anymore. There's not the time factor, so if you did take it into account, forget it totally for the "study score".

3. As you said about spelling, etc, this I can't check, it's 43 pages of a tiny score. But forget about parts as well! The study score needs to be complete and provide a helpful insight to the conductor and the composer, or examiners, not be ready for the parts. The parts come later (in this came they came early! :D)

4. I don't see very much reason to have the "Fantasy for piano and orchestra" on the top of every page. It's not such an amazing title either way (!) but really...

5. You highlight some bar numbers but not others. However you still have bar numbers on each page and each system and each section. I would propose changing the bar umbers in squares, into A, B, C... rehearsal letters instead. But this is up to you.

6. Score is in C, or not? (I know it's transposed, don't worry). I always write score in C, since my music is far from tonal, so I'm not sure if the score needs a comment "score transposed" or anything like that... :-/ Anyone else on this?

7. Some truplet numbers (harp bar 5 for exampl), are mingled with noteheads, etc and you can't make them out. Move them accordingly.

8. Colliding elements. Too many to list. (example bar 26, F. Hrns. the mf is right on the barline. Move it). Even noteheads and accidentals collide with each other some times (bar 20-25, piano, for example).

9. bar 50, trumpets, et all: Detach the 2 truplets in the end. It looks confusing this way. 5 notes beamed together and 2 truplets. Or even better make this whole 5 beam + 1 rest a 6plet, not 2 3plets.

10. harp, bar 95. This is the first time that you provided pedal information, I think (not 100% sure). I would prefer to avoid it. After all this time, and half the piece gone, just put the 7 pitches down in 32nds, extend the beam slightly with the special tools and then start the glissando lines...

11. I usually, and personally, put a straight line for glissando, and not a wavy one. Not sure which one is best. And I usually write down something like gliss.

12. At current page %, all tempo indications cannot be read. At my (simple and smallish) 17" screen that is. If I remember correctly the default is Times New Romans, 14, bold. Othewise you can't make them stand out enough, I think.

13. bar 130, piano. The accents, while in default position there, by Finale, are on the wrong place (because you moved the notes to the other staff). Move the accents above the notes and outside the staff.

14. bar 196, piano. The legato slurs is colliding with the notes.

I really can't find anything else, without going into more specifics, which would be a nightmare at my current busy position.

I hope this helped.

im not much a fan of this style

but this seems like a well written piece regardless

strong force , power and flow and lush colors.

My question is how did you go about writing this piece? Just in general. Did you sketch it out or something else?

With this piece (as with most of my pieces) the main theme just came to me as i was doing my daily improv on the piano. I sketched out the main themes and then from there I would sit on finale and just wait for ideas to pop into my head and punched them straight into finale. Even though it would have been smarter to make a two piano score to this piece first I orchestrated everything as I went. When I would get stuck i would go to the piano and play up to my stopping point till something came into my fingers that worked then i would just sit down and write it all out and wait for more ideas to come to me. Does that help? I have maybe two pages of actual hand written sketch of the whole piece...other than that it was all written in front of the computer screen. Its very hard to explain the process I go through....things just pop into my head....

Nikolas, thank you very much for taking the time to look through the score and help me! You are too kind.

That helps, that's pretty much how I do it. I'm trying to see if most people write at the piano. I can't really do that since I developed some major wrist problems preparing for the piano profeciancy(sp...my english sucks) last year. Now I have to wear a neckstrap with I perform clarinet. I was wondering if you had some idea of how you wanted your hamonies to go or did you just write you liked at the piano?

I know that that this is just meant to be a single work for piano and orchestra, but is there any chance you could add a second and third movements and make it a complete piano concerto? :D

*hoping, because this is such a great piece and he wants to hear more!*

There are one-movement concerti, you know.

With this piece (as with most of my pieces) the main theme just came to me as i was doing my daily improv on the piano. I sketched out the main themes and then from there I would sit on finale and just wait for ideas to pop into my head and punched them straight into finale. Even though it would have been smarter to make a two piano score to this piece first I orchestrated everything as I went. When I would get stuck i would go to the piano and play up to my stopping point till something came into my fingers that worked then i would just sit down and write it all out and wait for more ideas to come to me. Does that help? I have maybe two pages of actual hand written sketch of the whole piece...other than that it was all written in front of the computer screen. Its very hard to explain the process I go through....things just pop into my head....

Your method is very similar to mine! :)

Nice piece, by the way. It does sound a lot like Prokofiev, like it has been said before.

I may as well comment on this piece, despite the fact that this person hasn't been back to YC in nearly a year.

Now that I've changed browsers, I can actually listen to it.

I liked it.

I thought the themes did sound a tiny bit hackneyed and film-ish, however. (remark.. I said "tiny bit")

The over-all idiom, quite beautiful and impressionistic, is (sadly) become a bit of a movie clich