The Talking Willow Tree - Woodwind Quintet

Instruments:

Flute, Obeo, clarinet Bb, english horn =o, Basoon

Based on tritones =p.

Enjoy!

Mp3: The Talking Willow Tree

The opening is nice, until the chords are repeated. Then it starts to get kind of monotonous until near the end, when you change it up a little. The melodic part is really nice, but that was kind of the only thing I wanted to focus on listening to the piece. I like the use of tritones to produce a kind of scary effect, and I can see the willow tree lol. Nice piece.

would you post a score?

Yes,

A few notes: I'm going to take out the english horn in measures 63 - 74. The chamaleu register of the clarniet will be fine and probably actually make a better effect then what I was looking for. Plus, the english horn will probably overshadow the flute in that area.

At measure 50+ I'm raising the flute 1 octave.

And a few notes that i'll be changing...

anyways, here is the score.

woodwind quintet.MUS

I do love the use of tritones!

However, I feel the melodic line introduced at the start and later used as a baseline could benefit from some revision in terms of its role.

It provides a nice starting point for the piece, but by halfway through the piece I was sick of it. Then when you removed it, the sudden change in the piece gave an empty feeling, structurally unsatisfying. On the other hand, when it was brought back again, I just wanted it to stop, and it went from being a really nice line to a nuisance.

I think that to improve the piece you could look at removing the repeated line after the beginning at points where it isn't essential, to make for a more pleasant listening experience.

Your piece is excellent, adequately atmospheric, very good use of the tritones and well proportioned and balanced (I can't hear or see any of the monotonous lines or dullness mentioned above - and I heard it thrice already!!!). I could say though that the motivic change from bar 63 to bar 74 is so delightful that it should be developed and advanced further than just as a minor episode during your mysterious narrative. I'd like to know more about these stories and that willow, is the piece totally programmatic or are you trying to decrystallise the feeling of the story and not narrate the story itself? Excellent work!

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/quartet-no-6-a-18430.html

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/nonettopiece-18431.html