Partita for Solo Cor Anglais

This is just what it's called: a partita for a solo English horn. The five movements aren't connected by a single tonality; rather, the central idea is to display various musical styles of Europe. Three are dance forms while the other two are more song-like. Overall, I think it's challenging for the English horn player because each movement requires almost a totally different mood than the others, ranging from whimsical to mournful.

My original ordering of the movements was:

I. Jig and Reel

II. Minuetto

III. Bagatelle

IV. Wiegenlied

V. Cs

jig and reel - english horn.pdf

minuetto - english horn.pdf

bagatelle - english horn.pdf

kleine wiegenlied - english horn.pdf

cs

jig and reel - english horn.mid

minuet sketch - enghorn.MID

cs

kleine wiegenlied - english horn.MID

bagatelle - english horn.mid

Your pages are in reverse order on the pdf files.

This was generally well-written for the instrument and the individual pieces worked well within their own structures. The harmonic progressions were also convincing, if perhaps a little simple. What lets this set of pieces down is a lack of originality. Your Partita would have gone down very well in a musical soiree circa 1850. There were thousands of suites just like this written in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries and it is difficult to avoid clich

I pretty much second siwi's post. It's a set of nice pieces with decent melodies, a clear formal structure and definitely not without charm. And there's nothing wrong with staying simple. But for me, if a set of pieces has a certain length (which your suite does), it needs some things to keep me interested in the piece. Maybe a certain special quirk, maybe a strong formal/harmonical tension that pulls it onwards, maybe a curious exaggeration of certain characteristics, maybe exploring the special characteristics your instrument is using by playing with its colours, registers and dynamics, or maybe just to allow the performer enough personal freedom to bring interesting aspects into the piece on his own.

There are two suggestions that came to my mind first:

- Add dynamics. I am aware that the English horn isn't the instrument with the greatest dynamic range of all instruments, and it's certainly ok to leave some dynamic decisions to the performer. But just indicating some general prevailing dynamics and some changes will automatically make your piece more "three-dimensional", by giving it another parameter than pitch and rhythm. You may also consider getting more detailed with your articulations, which are relatively sparse. A side-effect to getting detailed with dynamics, phrasing and articulation is that the piece immediately seems more carefully throught-through to the performer, which is much more motivating to practice and put some effort in than just some melodies (I'm exaggerating here, I know).

- Your melodies are quite "square" and sometimes even a bit formulaic. With that I mean that you seem to understand the classical principles of melody-building very well: You use eight-bar or four-bar periods that are built out of two parts, and eight- or four-bar "sentences" made out of a motif, its sequence and a development. Often also with their typical harmonical buildup. Certainly, these often -are- the structures Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven used for their melodies, but their music often draws its fascination from deviations from these expectations. There are insertions, contractions, modulations, or several such phrases that overlap each other or crossings between different such elements. Motivic treatments such as sequencing are certainly "effective" in a way, but they can get overused quickly, and you use it a lot even in very short pieces such as the Wiegenlied and Minuet. Maybe try to vary the way you develop a motive a bit more and try to move out from strict four- and eight-bar groupings.