Bassoon Concerto - First Movement

This is not only my first posted piece on this site but my first serious attempt at a concerto, so please give me as much advice or criticism as you can.

I don't think it really conforms to any particular style, and my main concerns are that it is not harmonically interesting enough, not melodically memorable and not well structured enough. So advice in these areas especially would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Orpheus.

Bassoon Concerto - 1.mid

Bassoon Concerto - 1a.pdf

If you could post a MIDI or PDF file, I'd be obliged to critique :thumbsup:.

Yes, please post a .pdf, I'd love to take a look at it.

I second, err.... third that. =]

I can't really help much, because the .sib file made the score really small, but I think the beginning was good, with a mysterious feel to it. After that, it was still okay, but it sounded like something out of a video game. I like how you gave other instruments interesting parts while keeping the focus on the bassoon.

EDIT: I just looked at the PDF. The score's a mess. The beginning is a little confusing, especially where bassoon and bass clarinet are staccato and tenuto at the same time (kind of hard to do on most woodwinds, but I don't really know much about them). But look at how low the bass clarinet part goes! Try changing the clef. I'm not sure, but I think they're normally in bass clef anyway. Some accidentals are also covered by notes. RE-EDIT: Bass clarinets are not in bass clef, according to Enigmus. Sorry!

I don't really understand the first few bars in the solo bassoon part. They seem a little repetitive, and I find them a little annoying, but that's more my problem than yours. After that, there's some good stuff going on in the solo part. I like the rhythms in the rest of the orchestra.

Not to bother at all, but do you still plan on adding a MIDI? I am just really interested to hear this piece (I don't have sibelius), because I haven't heard of many bassoon concertos..so yeah..please don't think I'm a nuisance..just a bit interested.

The beginning is a little confusing, especially where bassoon and bass clarinet are staccato and tenuto at the same time .

That is standard notation for detached, but not staccato. As to the bass clarinet, that is probably a fair point.

@Romanticist: Search for 'bassoon' on wikipedia and go all the way to the bottom. I won't write any here, since there are already alot of good ones on that list

No no no no ... all it means is poco staccato. Meaning that full length notes (tongued) are not desired, but neither are short notes with quick attacks. It's sort of the medium inbetwixt the two. Articulation markings are interpreted differently by A. Strings, B. Winds, C. Keyboards, D. Percussion.

I'll comment on your score editing until I have something I can actually listen to.

First off... expand the width of the staves/systems so that they cover the entire page. You have whole pages with only half of them being used to display the music, make sure you're are using every little bit you can. Maybe check your page margins for this. Next... you put the bassoon in the wrong place. A solo instrument (as in a concerto) will ALWAYS go right above the string section in an orchestral score. So in your case, between Glockenspiel and Violin I. That would be the proper location. It would also be marked "Solo Bassoon" and not just "Bassoon". ALSO... for some of the parts it might be better to mark "2 Flutes" instead of just "Flute." Just looking at the first page I can't tell if you are using 2 or 4 horns, or 2, 3, or 4 trumpets. These things need to be clear enough that a musically dumb person can make sense of them.

Nextly, your staves are a little bit squeezed together. It might help to shrink the size so there is more breathing room between them. Collisions such as between bass clarinet and bassoon on the first page are inexcusable. See how the a2 marking hits the note in the oboe entrance? That is another example. These are just things that help improve the readibility of the score and make it easier for us to comment on the music itself.

First notes in violin I in the piece... these are marked pizz. but you have slurs. You cannot slur notes while playing pizzicato. Okay... your piccolo part goes below the range of the piccolo. That is provided your score is in concert pitch, which it appears to be. Lowest note of the piccolo is D. You have a few C's flying around in there, consider putting those in a split flute part instead. I would also advise you put the score in transposing pitch instead of concert pitch. That would make the bass clarinet part a lot easier to read, as well as other things. It doesn't make a lot a sense to put bass clarinet in bass clef (somebody above suggested this) because it READS treble clef, a ninth above what it actually plays, and having it in concert pitch treble clef is... madness in ledger lines.

On page two where the horns enter you have 1 and 2 in octaves and 3 and 4 in octaves. For some odd reason, you gave horn 3 the highest part, and horn 2 the lowest. Horn 1 shoud be the highest, horn 3 is next, then horn 2 is low, and horn 4 is the lowest. Number of legder lines you are using for horns is ridiculous. Put them in treble clef and transpose a fifth. Sibby should be able to do this for you.

On page 8 I think you could do something more interesting then unison in all the winds. For one thing you're asking for some very extreme ranges in the oboe and clarinets, best keep a little below that. In measure 60 I'm not sure why you have so many different dynamic markings. You have F, FF, and mP all in the woodwinds, all for different parts. It's best you keep your dynamic plan as simple as possible. At m. 63 you have ppp marked after a few fortes in the woodwinds, maybe a marking subito ppp would be the effect you are looking for? Also... you have this ppp, but your notes are marked with accents as well. Would you mind explaining that one to me? :happy: Also, your percussion and violin parts are missing the ppp marking altogether. Unless you WANT them to be loud... in which case I myself would mark (mP) in parenthesies like that for clarity of intentions.

Looking a few pages ahead and all I can do is cringe. I will gladly comment further if you would make the score a little more readable. The collisions make it impossible. And don't forget to put in transposing pitch! :D

Thanks for posting a .pdf file. I'm afraid I can't offer an opinion until you first transpose the score, and then fix all the collisions, as it would take far too much effort on my part to overlook such glaring errors.

I second that! And put up an mp3 because MIDI is sadly inadequete to put all the sounds of an orchestral score together.

You could always download scorch.

I am not altering my computer for anyone else's benefit. Nor would I expect anyone else to download Notepad for me. Hence, my encouragement of using universally acceptable files, namely, .pdf.

@Romanticist: Search for 'bassoon' on wikipedia and go all the way to the bottom. I won't write any here, since there are already alot of good ones on that list

Thanks, I know there are a good number of them out here, but what I meant is that I haven't heard many of them. Thanks anyway though :)

Babe, are you trying to murder your bassoonist with those runs at the beginning?

And all the notes tounged, at that speed?

You're really writing up to high b in your standard writing? This piece sounds cool, but it's really out of normal playing range. Yes, the instrument can reach that high, but that doesn't mean you should write up there.

Um, as the music is concerned, there were parts I did like and parts I didn't.

First of all, congrats at writing a concerto, let alone for bassoon!

Ok, what I did like: I thought it was a very interesting piece, but only the second half. The harmonies you created were epic and very filmy, which I really didn't like the filmy orchestration (I felt like I was watching Pirates of the Carribean or something), but again teh harmonies at certain spots were fascinating and marvelous.

I honestly couldn't follow along the score because my computer is lame and there is a slight pause while changing pages, and when I did change pages sometimes it skipped pages and meh, w/e. I'm not one to comment on scores anyway so....yeah.

Somethings I didn't like were the fact that the bassoon didn't have a single solo line until the end?? To me this didn't seem like a concerto but instead a piece for full orchestra. Nothing wrong with that, but I typically expect to hear more from the bassoon. It did have it's moments, which the writing seemed good, but I figured you would give it more solo sections, as in no underlying chords and such. Also, like I said, I enjoyed the second half much more, because the first half seemed less authentic. Maybe it's the filmy nature, I'm not sure, but that's just what I got out of it. The percussion was right out of a rock concert to me, not bad, just sayin.

I think your shining moment was about 3:00 into it, that's when I knew I would return to this piece for further listens. The end chords right before the bassoon solo didn't really do it for me either. They just seemed so weak compared to the excellent material you had for the minute before that.

As far as your orchestration, well it definately was colorful. With the opening bars as well as my favorite section from about 3:0-4:00. Very well done. I won't comment technically on it since, well, I'm kinda nub.

Overall, great work man. I haven't really written an orchestral piece in a while, but I do know the amount of work needed to make it sound great, and hours of work you put in here for sure show! I've listened 3 times now, and have to say I stand by what I said. Superb job and don't take my nitpicking that personally, these were just things that I think could be improved on is all. Can't wait to hear more man! Good work! :)

Vince

Sorry everyone about the quality of the first pdf. I didn't realise I had not changed the page size to a3 as I had intended which resulted in the clashing:whistling:. I have now replaced it with an a3 version:D. Note, in regards to an earlier comment, the piccolo sounds an octave higher than written, and the bass clarinet an octave lower (In the same way as the double bass or contrabassoon). Hence although these instruments may appear to have parts outside their range, they in fact do not.:P

And all the notes tounged, at that speed?

You're really writing up to high b in your standard writing? This piece sounds cool, but it's really out of normal playing range. Yes, the instrument can reach that high, but that doesn't mean you should write up there.

While the notes tongued are very difficult, they are not impossible when you factor in double tonguing. If however it is too difficult for a performer, I would not object to a slightly slower version.

As for the upper range, as a bassoonist I know that a high B is actually quite accessible, and more so for an experienced player.

Thanks anyway, in future I will try to keep thimgs a little more manageable.

I don't like this new babe thing you do.

:angry:

While the notes tongued are very difficult, they are not impossible when you factor in double tonguing. If however it is too difficult for a performer, I would not object to a slightly slower version.

They're fine if YOU'RE the one performing them, because you know you can, but yes, I would tone it down a bit, just to get it in the standard difficulty range. :P

As for the uber high notes, I'm just going with what my bassoony friends have said. If you know differently, don't let me affect your composition. :)

High B (B4) isn't excessive, but I personally would not expect a bassoonist or oboist (or clarinetist or saxophonist) to double tongue anything. Brass, sure. Flutes, sure. Reeds? Uh-huh.

This is great, I love the rhythmic vitality, and the approach to tonality is fresh

If he wishes to write double tongue, why not? Maybe I'm learning a horn concerto that involves a very rapid A major arpeggio from low bass clef A to treble high A and I can't yet do that. So I'll learn how to do it even if it's out of my "difficulty range." If you want to write a phrase that is possible for bassoon but not easy, go ahead and write it unless you HAVE a performer in mind --- in which case you would consult them and see what they can and cannot do. But if you are writing it for the experience of writing a concerto and you are going to CALL it a bassoon concerto, I say go ahead and feature some of the instrument's more demanding techniques. If somewhere done the road somebody decides they wanna learn it, they will. It's not like community band where poor souls get music thrown at them with the composers praying that it will be manageable. In writing a concerto, try to appeal to the soloist.

... *wonders if that argument was anywhere near coherent*

I just got back from first week of band camp, I'm a little woozy yet. :sweat:

My point was that on single and double reed instruments, double/triple tonguing is not at all idiomatic. It's one reason that for the clarinet, slur-two-tongue-two is such a well-known clich

Well, for single reed instruments it is a lot more difficult, no? I can't even begin to do it on clarinet myself, and believe me I've tried. Can do it fine on brass (well, not great but I'm improving.) But it seems to me that it is rather easy on double reeds. In a youth orchestra I'm in the bassoonist who was a freshman in college was able to double tongue just fine. He was good... but I don't think he was exactly a legend at the instrument and he could still do it. The other bassoonist (she doubled over from flute when 2nd bassoon was needed) was also able to do it, and she wasn't even that accomplished of a bassoonist.

You are right. Double tonguing does not have to correlate to technical proficiency. It just takes a bit of practice.