Serenade for Strings

Golden ratio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In music, as I said, we are reversing it a little. The golden ratio IN GEOMETRY is a ratio where, if a is the large side and b the smaller side: a+b/a = a/b and it equals actually more towards 8/5 rather than 5/8! :D (1.61.... blah blah). This is "Phi" φ in Greek.

"Theta" is the run around a/a+b = b/a and it is indeed 5/8 or "theta" θ in greek.

Just to be exact.

Hi Nico!

Thanks very much for your kind words. I really appreciate it!

I wasn't aware of what the golden ratio was, other than the fact that - being golden - it must be a "damn good" ratio! I'll look into it in more detail, and thanks to Anti-Atonality and Mr Sideris for chiming in with some incredibly useful information in that regard! Cheers!

I was criticizing the seemingly out-of-place "post-climaxes" scattered about after the 3/8 mark.

Yep! I didn't really spend much time planning the structure of the piece. I had a rough idea in my mind and followed a kind of mental image that I had, but that really wasn't sufficient. Obviously in future I will try a more formal approach to structure.

may I ask the purpose for the lamentation?

Certainly! The Lamentation is written about a wartime family who must flee their home for fear of death. They must escape their home country and are constantly fearing capture! Hopefully I managed to convey a sense of fear and dread!

Aniolel, thanks for listening. Much appreciated!

You have some lovely material, although I did find it a tad unrelenting at times (that "going on and on feel", often present in the music of Wagner). The control of harmony is always very strong - particularly pleasing in the sections where parts are moving in different directions to one another. I didn't really detect any contrasting moods or flavours, however - it seemed to mostly be saying the same thing throughout.

May I suggest a landscape format score? There is a lot of space between staves which would not go so much to waste in landscape.

Is this the corrected score, by the way? I still don't see a huge amount of bowing. I imagine since this is a very lyrical piece, you would want to make good use of well-organised bowing.

I absolutely love this piece!

It reminds me of a piece I heard ages ago, but I can't remember what it was called.

Barber fan? :D

Absolutely stunning. Musically, great job.

Barber fan? :D

Absolutely stunning. Musically, great job.

That's it. Adagio for Strings, from Platoon.

That was conducted in the BBC Programme "Maestro".

Lovely piece.

Barber fan? :D

Absolutely stunning. Musically, great job.

Cheers, made my day! :D

And yes, I am a Barber fan!

You have some lovely material, although I did find it a tad unrelenting at times (that "going on and on feel", often present in the music of Wagner).

Thanks Mike. I do agree with you. I think one measure of a good, long piece of music is whether it flows structurally. I don't think I really nailed this particular aspect and structure is something I need to take a bit more time to look over. As suggested before lightnening some of the textures would probably help in that respect.

Oh and thanks Rick Miller. Appreciate the comments! Again, Barber is one of my fans. I suspect he was influenced by my work to some degree, hence the similarities between mine and his work ;)

Cheers,

Btw, you still need to change/consider changing the name of the piece. Serenade isn't appropriate unless you intend to change the definition of a serenade. But the piece isn't convincing in that way.

By the way, to be honest, I am sorry but I rather listen to Barber's Adagio for Strings at every occasion instead of this piece. Given a choice between two wines (of the same kind), one aged and one not, I will choose the aged wine over the younger one at every occasion. And when I try the younger one, I just remember how much better the older one still is. It is not so much a matter of age or time, but rather one of quality.

Well I originally did call it Serenade - wrongly of course. However that soon changed to Elegy which then became Lament.

If I was being honest, I would agree that my own brew is not as mature, aromatic or perhaps as 'refined' as Barber's own. However, please beware that my wine is still only freshly distilled and thus cannot hope to be as rich as a 1920 Barber! :D On a serious note, I did not intend to capture, mirror or even to compete with Barber's Adagio for Strings. I do not think that any piece that obviously pastiches this classic could possibly hope to exceed the original. The similarity to Barber's style is perhaps coincidental. I was actually very much influenced by Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht at the time, although I was not trying to merely emulate it!

Thanks for listening and commenting again!

Hmm, I find myself listening to this piece on an almost daily basis now. It's absolutely phenomenal.

Such a traditional chordal progression..

i - VImaj7 - IVmaj7 - i6/4 - N6 *shivers* - i6 - ii

Thanks again Gav! I started with the melody, and really the whole point of the piece was to work around it. I wanted to create something memorable, followed by some 'adventurous development' and then a return to the melody.

Thanks for listening and commenting!