Setting of a Walt Whitman Poem

hello all!

It has been a while. I took a break during the spring when my grades were dropping, but now that I have a better handle on them, it seems I will be returning. But, with me, I am bringing my music, so be warned! haha, just joking.

But, anyway, I come to you with the first movement of a larger work today. It is called "A Clear Midnight", and it is a setting of a poem by Walt Whitman. However, for me (this is if you KNOW my music), this is very short. SO, I decided to make it the first movement of a much LARGER work...

:whistling:

But, I am not completely positive I want to pursue this. but, what it would be is a work of 2 or 3 shorter Walt Whitman Poems that would allow the Choral Director to perform ALL of or just one. However, my concern is that the music is too hard and not enjoyable enough to do something like that.

All of this being said, I am imploring your opinion, should I write the others or keep this one on the backburner for a later project?

Also, Apologies in advance for the horrible score... it is just a rough draft.

Score-

A Clear Midnight.pdf - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

.mp3-

A Clear Midnight.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

Thanks!

-Morivou

So... that bad, huh? haha.

Your word placement an syllables are, well... awful. There's no need to repeat a vowel many times, even if you want the attacks staccato. I think the tenor lyrics in bar 9 are a typo...

I felt like you didn't develop anything. It was three separate short ideas that were unrelated - bars 1 - 16 is the first one, 17 - 22 is the second, and 23 - 31 is the third, before you return again to the first one in bar 32. Basically, the effect was not one of a clear midnight, but of being dragged.

There's a lot of quarter feeling to this piece that you split quite effectively in bars 18 and 19. You could relate that material to earlier by conceiving the rhythms earlier a bit differently. If, for instance, you split up "Thy free flight..." into a 3/4 and a 5/4 bar, and made the 3/4 composed of two dotted quarters (instead of a rest and two quarters), a relationship would be set up.

If you added a bit more florid counterpoint in earlier sections (moving lines against static ones, for instance) too, the sixteenth-note material would not seem out of place.

Your sopranos will hate those high A's. In addition, the drama of the high note is removed when it is presented mf the first time. It is then presented once in the tenor, and twice more in the soprano before the end of the piece. In addition, you have a big arrival on the G natural in bar 14, just two bars after that high A. I feel like it might diminish that climax you're climbing to.

Why a full whole note on "the" (as in, "the stars")? All it does is create resistance to the effect of the arrival. It also adds undue emphasis on the unimportant article. You do the same thing on "and" just a bar earlier. If you wanted that long "and," I'd say bring "the" on the upbeat of that same measure, perhaps on a sixteenth note: "aaaaaaaaaand... the staaaaaaaaaars!" Like that.

I'd say the best thing you can do for this piece is to create audible relationships between the three ideas you have - it'll make the pacing much better.

Alright, thanks for the comments. I have changed pretty much everything you told me to. I also think it works better. Howeve,r I recall you saying you don't enjoy Eric Whitacre somewhere, and a lot of my style is based off of him. So, I think I see a lot of where you are coming from.

So, if you see this, take a second glance and critique me some more please. And, for everyone new, these ARE the changed files uploaded, no longer the original.

Alright, thanks for the comments. I have changed pretty much everything you told me to. I also think it works better. Howeve,r I recall you saying you don't enjoy Eric Whitacre somewhere, and a lot of my style is based off of him. So, I think I see a lot of where you are coming from.

So, if you see this, take a second glance and critique me some more please. And, for everyone new, these ARE the changed files uploaded, no longer the original.

My first thought, listening through the piece, was that it was attempting to do something similar to "Leonardo dreams..." That piece is very much a collage of stylistic quotation. The trick to it is that all of the pitch, melodic, and rhythmic content in the piece are related, so it sounds like one entity still. I'll take a look at the new stuff, though.

Alright, thank you. I don't quite understand what you mean by related, though...

I have nothing to critique, so I'm not much of help, but you did ask me to listen to this.

I didn't notice many of the issues that Christopher brought up earlier. The piece seemed to flow quite well and didn't seem very disjointed. It took me a while to warm up to the sixteenth note runs and passages. I wouldn't expect they'd be performed so quickly in a real performance, they sound out of place at first still, but like I said I got used to them pretty quickly. I only listened once, but I don't remember hearing the climax that clearly. It might have just been the poor mp3 misleading me - it's so hard to get a real choral sound out of a computer.

Unfortunately the pdf was corrupted when I tried viewing it. I tried a few times and still no go. So I am sorry that I can't say anything about that.

I did like your harmonies, they were quite beautiful and very relaxing. I could see the connection to a clear midnight environment.

Thank you Enigmus for just listening. I am glad you liked it.

Beautiful! I love it. I think the part from 22 till the end is realy pretty. And of course the O soul part too. Heck, every part lol.

Just watch out for the low D as some bases in the choir cant go that low. Maybe you should write an ossia for them. Either double the 2nd tenors or write them a new part if u don't want the low bass to be doubled high.

The text at bar 20, should be pon - de - ring... Instead of Po - o - on - der. That looks like Poondering. The same goes with Love.

Have you thought of breathings? According to my choral teacher, it's best to have that all thought out and sorted out from the composition stage rather than the rehearsal stage (wasting time to sort out the breathing breaks etc. than rehearsing)/

You've also got a really low Tenor part, which really can be done by the Bass. Like at the last chords at bar 41. IT would have been heaps stronger if the Bass takes the E and the D that the tenor has. Some of the voice crossovers are good and works well though. =D

Other than that, good piece. A live recording would be awesome!

btw, can you check my Ubi Caritas for a bit please?

It was a product of a half n hour work. I should have worked on it longer, but whatever.

It's great to see someone who likes to compose for choir like me! :D It's rather scarce.

Thank you very much for your criticism and praise. I will look at all of your suggestions. I will also definitely check your piece out!

Yes the music seems fine in and of itself (though I only saw page 2 of the pdf, it was corrupted or something), but you really need work on the conventions of how to add lyrics. First, if you want a syllable over many pitches/notes, there is no need to reiterate that syllable for every note. As in, if you wanted to sing, oh I don't know, "unicorn," it would NOT be "u-u-u-ni-co-o-orn." It would be "U---ni-co---rn." You see what I mean? If not tell me and I'll try to explain further. Essentially just remember that you will only type the word as it appears in regular prose - no extra letters.

Also, when a syllable covers more than one note, those notes must be slurred together. That one seems to be a less-well known convention.

In addition, there are some spots that I don't understand, like you had in measure 22 and 23, the monosyllabic word "best" and two of the same pitch over it. I mean, the soprano changed notes but none of the other voices did. Just have those voices sing a dotted half note.

Also, I'm very confused by some of your voice crossings/orchestration in general. Going back to measure 23, you have altos singing F3, while BOTH tenor parts sing above it. And then the higher divisi alto sings above the soprano - why? Seems to me, instead of having sections sing notes that are at best BARELY in their range, re-orchestrate it so that all voices are in comfortable ranges.

Now to venture into more...subjective comments. In measure 27, you have the bass split into 4 divisi - this seems a bit excessive. I know, I know, Whitacre does that and more in Water Night among other things, but generally 2 divisi (or somethimes 3) should be your limit. Unless you're writing for double choir, in which case, go nuts. Another complaint about that bass part is that generally, you want to keep the lower voices in more open intervals - again, going back to Whitacre, you'll notice if you study his scores extensively that the bass tends to move in perfect fifths a lot of the time. The explanation delves into discussion of overtone series and blabity blah, but the short of it is, close intervals sound very muddy in lower ranges. You'll notice, on a piano, that even a major chord sounds like mud if it's low enough. Build a strong low foundation, and you'll find it gives you freedom to use more dissonant chords on top.

There's plenty of other nitpicky things could go into but for now this'll do. I'm trying to help you translate your music to the page better because it's nice to see another budding composer from the Whitacre school of thought, and I'd like to see you flourish.

AND HEY GO FIND MY CHORAL PIECES TOO (SHAMELESS PLUG)

Beautiful piece. I have to admit, after listening to something nice like that and not see any immediate compliment was really painful. You have a good piece on your hands, and the only problems I could find were editorial ones, not compositional.

I had written a huge, in-depth critique pointing out what to do and where, but halfway through I hit delete, and instead of backspacing, it took me back a page and erased everything I wrote. I then noticed that Dev had covered most of them, so I'll just summarize what I said and mention anything that hasn't been touched on or emphasized enough already.

- Avoid unnecessary voice crossing between parts. In mm.22-25, you're going to be hard pressed to find altos that can hit Fs and sopranos that can hit As. Not doing this would probably solve almost all the editing mistakes in your piece alone.

- When doing voice splitting, or taking the basses low, consider making the first split for the baritones. The most common split in choral music is in the bass section, primarily because baritones can't hit anything below a low G easily. An example of where this is needed is 22-24 (fixing that would also prevent the absurd 9th jump from a low D to a mid E). An example where you did this right is 35-36.

- Avoid unnecessary doubling of voices when splitting them. The worst offenders are the shared A in 28-29, the shared A and D in 39-43, and the shared F in 42-43, just to mention a few. If you want to find them easily, just make a piano reduction (Finale and perhaps Sibelius have built-in plugins that do this) and look wherever there are unreasonable amounts of splits.

- Something I also notice that a lot of people do is have women and men sing the same note in an attempt to get a certain kind of sound and end up with a massive split. In reality, though, listeners can't tell the difference if it were only men or women singing that note any way. I saw this in 26-27, and a couple other spots.

- Avoid making dramatic leaps early on. In the first measure, you have sopranos jumping up to a high A. If you do this, it is guaranteed that most choir's sopranos will sound strained and flat trying to make that jump. I'd heavily suggest cutting that leap and substituting it with a 5th or anything that isn't as taxing.

- On mm.20, I understand you're trying to achieve an accented marcatto effect by writing all the vowels for each 16th note, but by doing this you're making the music very difficult to read. Set the lyrics normally as you would do any other part of the song and add expressive text or accent markings instead.

Like I said, these are all editorial critiques. Compositionally, this song is very well written and beautiful. I especially love the special moments you make at transitions, like the subsiding effect that you give the women in mm.8 before creating a stack, or the dramatic falter in 13-16. The ending is splendid too, very mesmerizing.

After reading the mentions of Eric Whitacre in the thread, I'd have to say this piece didn't remind me of his work at all. Some Whitacre pieces grow stale because of his tendency to roll out a cool phrase after phrase with little direction, but here you mastered the phrase-by-phrase structure and managed to make it very interesting and flow quite well. Perhaps it's the way you choose to make your transitions, not sure, but it was a pleasure listening to it.

Nice work again, and good luck with learning more about editing. I suggest studying up on counterpoint if you haven't already, as this will prevent most of the mistakes you've made. Great piece.

I just got a notification because someone replied to this (matt) and I must say, it's a great work... I remember reading this. Nothing new about this yet? Keep posting new editions and all! It would be good! I wanna hear how this is now!

Good point! I need to edit this and get the revised edition up!! (*Morivou has so much to do!! haha*)

I am glad you all like my music so much! It just helps me put that much more effort into the process.

EDIT: Thank you all so much! Especially to Matt, my music (as you know) has matured a WHOLE BUNCH since I wrote this (over a year ago), so I would not have made those mistakes, however... I will be sure to edit and fix this up.

Well, this was revived, but after reading through the comments, I see almost everything I might have said has already been mentioned.

I did have one suggestion though. If you want that melodic line to open the song, in the sopranos, you may consider making the first verse a solo. Then repeat it with the entire choir. I'd avoid such a jump so early in the song, as everyone else has said, but if I really wanted it, I'd have the melody be in a solo soprano, and then when the choir came in, give the rest of the sopranos a harmony, and leave the soloist on that note.

I did like this though. Very pleasant to listen to. And your thoughts about it being too short are off. I think this is a fine length because in performance, so many of these phrases would be held out, the conductor might even conduct each individual word to really convey the meaning in such a powerful text. Especially in the beginning and end. It's a fine length for this sort of song.

Well, it's going to be in a set of three "short choral pieces". I have already written the second one and this one is going to be edited.

OK! The revised edition is up in a New Thread along with another piece of music (That way I could make another thread... O_O!!)

This is going to be the first movement of a THREE MOVEMENT CHORAL THINGY!!!! (sorry... caps lock crazy)

It is Entitled "A Clear Midnight"... and the subject matter is poems that emit the emotion of peace. So, all three short movements are ballads. Hopefully, I have provided enough interest to keep the audience awake. But, the three poems are "A Clear Midnight" (which is this thread's song), "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (by Yeats... one of my favorite poems! Which actually is going to have the only "upbeat" section in it. Smack dab in the middle), and "Luck" (By Langston Hughes).

Unfortunately... the Hughes poem is still under copyright. But, I am hopeful in securing copyright for it... cause it's an awesome poem. But, I am not looking to publish, just to share.

So, MEOW your way over to my new thread (which will be created form the time which I post this directly afterwords...)

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/clear-midnight-revised-july-27-two-songs-21153.html