Thermopylae Overture

I am 16 and this is my first completed orchestral composition (and it has already been performed, so it's pretty final, but I would appreciate some advice to improve my general compositional technique as I begin to write more stuff). My influences are mainly Beethoven and Tchaikovsky (hmmm... not particularly original there).

It was written to portray the Battle of Thermopylae, a great story of Greek heroism in which 300 Spartiates, under the leadership of Leonidias I, laid down their lives to delay a Persian onslaught, as a result of which Greece won a miraculous victory, following which we saw the flowering of Athens and the emergence of Socrates and co., along with Euripides and many other monumental contributors to our modern culture.

The piece is in a sort of rondo form, and (as an overture) skips around lots of different ideas (characters and events) quite quickly. It is quite thin overall in texture mainly because I knew for the performance I would have to hash together my own orchestra, and would be looking at maybe 8 violins max (in the end only 5, as it happened), so I had to go single ww and minimal brass (also given I had to search really hard for horn and trumpet players). I also am aware of a slight bias towards the woodwind in this composition, which you will probably notice. Anyway - I'll shut up and let you listen.

Thermopylae.sib

Thermopylae.mid

You want me to be perfectly honest?

It's structurally sound. It's written rather nice.

I just didn't like it, because it just seemed to much like other pieces of music I've heard. Of course, you can't help that, but this was really cliched. I'm sorry.

Don't be! Thanks for the opinion. Hmmm... it's hard to see how I might rectify something from being clichéd in general though...

But congrats on getting your thing performed! That must have been very exciting. I think the same thing, though, about Hans Zimmer being cliched, so don't mind that

Unoriginality is not a weed in young composers, it's a flower. Until you can imitate and understand the works of the past, don't count on being decently original. So while you're young, do what sounds good, even if others have done it already. It still sounds good after all!