First Noble Truth

Hey everyone, :)

I just wanted to share what I think is the best piece I've written to date, and hopefully get some feedback (positive or negative is fine). The piece is for flute and piano, and its four movements are titled birth, old age, sickness, and death. The material is somewhat dark so I made use of the whole tone scale, and some bitonality among other things. The score needs some touching up (specifically phrase markings) and I may go back sometime and rework the piece but for now this is its final form. Anyway, let me know what you think!

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First Noble Truth.pdf

Hi

I listened to the four parts, but I dont understand your music. I think it's because I'm not used to non-tonal music. I like the idea of the form of your cycle to have a similar theme in the fisrt and last part, but when I look at the titles I dont understand why birth and dead sound alike?

I'm willing to try and understand your music, can you help and explain? :D

I was rather bored with this piece. It's all a bunch of ascending and descending lines (usually a bunch of steps with an occasional skip), and makes use mostly of constant quarters or eights. I'm missing any kind of variety here. Your material needs a bit of sprucing up here. There are a lot of places where it just feels like things drop out (either the piano or the flute) and leaves these holes in the piece.

Also, your piano writing could be more involved. Piano's can do things besides single lines and tertian harmonies. Your flute part could make use of the flute a bit better as well. It seems like you just wrote lines and some chords, not actually thinking about the instruments you're using.

Thanks for your replies, as to why I used the same theme in birth and death, I feel they're quite linked and wanted to tie them together in a sort of a sense of rebirth. Also I've frequently heard mention about life getting faster and faster as you grow older so I wanted to portray the hastening towards the end. I really don't know the limitations of a flute player so was perhaps overly conservative in regards to leaving breathing space, so I can understand why you'd fault me on that. Anyway, thanks again, I appreciate getting any feedback, negative or positive, and you've given me a few things to ponder over.

Jackson