Wind Quartet: In a Lake - Life! & Snow is Falling

In A Lake - Life!

Snow is Falling:

Scores:

http://www.4shared.com/file/118923934/5030fbb9/Wind_Quartet_-_In_A_Lake.html

http://www.4shared.com/file/118923953/980ec99c/Wind_Quartet_-_Snow_Is_Falling.html

MP3:

http://www.4shared.com/file/118355540/27d6f0a9/wind_quartet_-_in_a_lake__final_.html

http://www.4shared.com/file/118923945/68765de8/snow_is_falling.html

A twopart Wind Quartet! This wind quartet reminds me a little of the music in the Legend of Zelda series. I tried to really employ the colors of the different instruments to get a really full sound and exotic images in my head. The music focuses on "visual" sounds, and also has a very interwoven texture (that is somewhat reminiscent of early church composers), so I titled the movements with impressionistic descriptions of what I saw when hearing it.

First movement: This movement has a lot of bubbly, quick notes that as well as fluttering that conjures up the image of moving water. Additionally, the piece on polyrhythms and changes in rhythmic feel between 3/4, 6/8 and 4/4 frequently to have a more organic, fluid rhythm. Voices float in and out and there are semi-canonic sections that reflects the overwhelming diversity of life moving around in a lake.

For the second movement: This movement is less polyphonic than the previous movement, although it still has the sense of a slight blur between accompaniment and melody to create a more organic, life-wielding scenery. The dark jazzier section in the middle reminds me a lot of the howling, biting wind of the winter, as well as the solitude of winter, with spring coming forth, represented by the metaphor of the rising of an abstract "jazz" in the composition.

--

"When I was still in middle school, partially because English was my second language, I was terrible with words. My thoughts were intense, but I had no way to concisely communicate them.

Improvising on piano and composing music was just something I came to do out of necessity, because I could communicate better speaking through the sounds of music than with spoken words. Music is the language for expressing the unspeakable."

These are both very enjoyable. I especially liked "In a Lake". I think you conveyed the sense of "diversity and fluidity" very well. I especially like how the rhythmic motifs, melody, and harmony flow in and out of each instrument. These certainly gives the sense of the motion of the water, as well as the countless life-forms in it, all of which contribute to the whole, as the instruments portray. No 1 instrument carries any 1 role, but everything helps to make the whole. Oh...that rhymed... :) well, haha. It's very nice.

1 thing to let you know, if you're unaware, "In a Lake" the score is abbreviating "Fl" on your Bb clarinet line. I then notice that it's also in concert pitch, making me believe it's actually in the key of the flute, instead of the clarinet. You may want to fix that before you put it in front of performers, if/when you do. And I really hope you have this quartet performed and recorded. Though your samples are quite nice, I'd love to hear this with actual players. Great work on the whole thing. Can't wait to see more of your work.

Thanks for your observations, OMWBWAY! The Flute part is a mistake in the score that I neglected; I will fix it so musicians aren't confused. I hope this quartet is recorded in the near future, if only for the fact that it plays a lot with tone color combinations.

A friend of mine mentioned that they noticed these quartets have an almost early church-music-like shape in its polyphony, even though it's more rhythmically complex and so on, which I think is really interesting. I have a taste for the polyphonic and I think one of the challenges of this piece is to not make it too monotonous by making it too consistently polyphonic or have the same kind of polyphony all the time.

Yeah, I definitely see that. Handel and Haydn etc, all used a ton of voice exchange. This is definitely a descendant of their styles.