The Rainy Day

Hi,

This is a composition which I am writing for my music A-level, and we have to set a given text to music. The text is a poem called The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longefellow, and it's extremely depressing!

So far I have completed the first verse, and have tried to write it in quite a modern Eric Whitacre-like style. I've attached the .sib and .midi files below. For those of you without sibelius the words to which I have set music for thus far are below:

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

The vine still clings to the moldering wall,

But at every gust the dead leaves fall,

And the day is dark and dreary.

Sorry I couldn't upload the score in any other format but I just can't work out how to do it and keep it within the size limits!!!

Any comments/tips, etc are much appreciated.

EDIT

Hey please look on the next page to find updated versions of the midi and pdf files.

The Rainy Day 2.sib

The Rainy Day.mid

Is there a way to zoom in on sibelius scorch?

So far my biggest comment is in m.12, you split "every" into "e-ve-r-y" Do you really want the sopranos to pronounce "eh veh urr ee," or were you trying to imply multiple notes to one syllable? Try doing "ev-ery" on the first and third eighth notes, respectively, and slurring note 1 to note 2 and note 3 to note 4.

Hey thanks for the comment.

Is there a way to zoom in on sibelius scorch?

Hmm, not that I know of but there should be because you can't see it very well at all at the moment!

So far my biggest comment is in m.12, you split "every" into "e-ve-r-y" Do you really want the sopranos to pronounce "eh veh urr ee," or were you trying to imply multiple notes to one syllable? Try doing "ev-ery" on the first and third eighth notes, respectively, and slurring note 1 to note 2 and note 3 to note 4.

Yeh, I wasn't quite sure how I should write that bit out, but you're right, I'll change it right away. I have also made some other alterations since my last post so I've uploaded it again.

The Rainy Day 2.mid

The Rainy Day 2.sib

Whoops, sorry i posted the wrong sibelius file!!

Ok, this should be the correct one now!

The Rainy Day 2.sib

Sorry to be annoying and keep posting on my own thread, but does anyone else have any advice/comments/criticisms. Please :)

As with "standard policy" here, post a PDF score and mp3. That's always more inviting to criticism.

Right, do you know how to get a pdf file from a sibelius file, coz i wanted to do that but I haven't been able to work out how yet?!

EDIT

Don't worry I just found out from this forum how to, I will upload the pdf now and the midi is in an above post.

Get a free PDF printer. I use CutePDF Writer.

Here's the pdf, hope that makes it easier for some of you to look at the score.

The Rainy Day.pdf

Get a free PDF printer. I use CutePDF Writer.

Hey, thanks I think we just posted at the same time, that's the program i used actually. It works really well!

Kinda reminds me of my own solitary choral piece "Death."

I don't know if there are more stanzas, but if there are you should use them and continue this. It just seems too short. Good stuff here, just keep going!

Hey, thanks so much for the reply, it's good to get feedback. I just listened to your piece 'Death' and I think it's a lot better than my piece! But thanks for the comparison.

Yeh there are two more stanzas, which I will write music for, I just need to think how to develop it now...

I need some soul destroying criticism, please listen. :)

You seem like you deserve criticism, so I'll edit this post in a few hours when I get a chance to listen. :)

Vince

Thank you.

I really like this piece, you definitely have to finish it! I enjoy the almost organ-like quality the piece has. As it progresses I would hope you can carry that along...I'm not familiar with the whole piece, but from what you've said it's wholly depressing. Whatever may come next, there must be a ray of light somewhere in the piece, wherever it is you really need to accentuate it well, or the peace could begin to drag lower and lower into the depths. Really find places to bring out the beauty of the words. You've done well so far. I'd love to hear this finished.

Ok, sorry for the delay

I can't view the score for some reason, I don't believe it's the link, I just think this comp I'm on sucks monkey butt cheese.

I'm not really fond of commenting on unfinished works, because it's kind of hard sometimes to see where you are going to go with it. But at any rate, I think you have a nice start. The second chord was very powerful because of dissonance, yet I didn't hear much more afterwards except once where you used anything but triads and what not. The somber mood could be heightened with more color, maybe min9ths, tritones, etc. etc.

Also, even though I can see why you only used long note values for the most part, if you varied the rhythm up a bit it might become more interesting.

Overall though, good start to your piece. Feel free to PM me when it's finished or further updated.

Vince

Hey, Ralph.

Thanks taking the time to have a listen, I appreciate your comments.

The second chord was very powerful because of dissonance, yet I didn't hear much more afterwards except once where you used anything but triads and what not. The somber mood could be heightened with more color, maybe min9ths, tritones, etc. etc.

Yeh I thought the dissonance was appropriate to represent the word cold. Yeh I wouldn't say there is that much dissonance after that but there is a lot of added 4ths, 6ths, 7ths, and 2nds. I didn't really want to go overboard on the dissonance but still try and keep it quite somber, but maybe there should be more, and yeh tritones are always good lol!

Also, even though I can see why you only used long note values for the most part, if you varied the rhythm up a bit it might become more interesting.

I was partly using the long, dull rhythms to represent the meaning of the words, but i agree it does seem a bit too monontonous after a while. I might not change what I've done thus far, but I will however begin to add more interest as the piece goes on, both rhythmically and with the dissonance, etc.

Thanks very much for the advice, I'll give you a shout, so to speak, when I've progressed further.

Ok, I've now got music for the second stanza as well, and have uploaded the latest files below. Once again I'd greatly appreciate anyone's views on this so please listen if you have the time and leave some comments.

There's one more stanza to go after this which is more joyful, so that will be quite different from the other two, and hopefully it well develop a lot more there as well. When I have finished that I will load it onto the complete works section.

The Rainy Day 2.pdf

The Rainy Day 2.mid