Tribute piece (work in progress) - Ensemble

Hi everyone.

This is the first composition I have ever been close to finishing.

I'm writing it as a tribute to a particular hospital ward (that saved my step-daughter's life).

It's for string quartet plus harp and flute. It is a work in progress.

Please be constructive. I accept that it's probably not very good, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

Download from Rapidshare

I hope it doesn't offend anyone's ears. :-)

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Mike

I Liked it. I just started with YC and need to improve my ears. I don't hear enough harp. For all these instruments, give the harp and flute some room, it'll make it a longer piece. I have the same problem but getting through that. Do a section with just harp and flute, then start adding the quartet.

It almost seems you have a good theme in there, repetition is not a bad thing. If kids can listen to 5 minutes of the same tune, repetition is not terrible. Again, this is one of my faults as well. Think of Beethoven's 9th -da da da da.... it goes on and on and everyone likes it mainly because they can remember the tune. Same thing about Eine Kliene Nacht Music, or Beethoven's 5th, Fur Elise, 2nd Movement to the Pathetic, etc. Other composers create a sound, rhythm, or progression to bring it together.

I bet you can reiterate some themes between the flute and harp and make the piece twice as long. Focus on a theme.

I Liked it. I just started with YC and need to improve my ears. I don't hear enough harp. For all these instruments, give the harp and flute some room, it'll make it a longer piece. I have the same problem but getting through that. Do a section with just harp and flute, then start adding the quartet.

It almost seems you have a good theme in there, repetition is not a bad thing. If kids can listen to 5 minutes of the same tune, repetition is not terrible. Again, this is one of my faults as well. Think of Beethoven's 9th -da da da da.... it goes on and on and everyone likes it mainly because they can remember the tune. Same thing about Eine Kliene Nacht Music, or Beethoven's 5th, Fur Elise, 2nd Movement to the Pathetic, etc. Other composers create a sound, rhythm, or progression to bring it together.

I bet you can reiterate some themes between the flute and harp and make the piece twice as long. Focus on a theme.

I agree. Although I've had bad experiences with Vaughan Williams due to repetition, so be careful.

I enjoyed it, but you should watch the dynamics. Harps are drowned out in any group of more than three other instruments very easily. And themes are good to rearrange for different combinations of instruments. You could take advantage of that to extend length very easily in this piece.

Thanks for the feedback so far - much appreciated. I've been instructed on the terniary form and have tried to build more structure into the piece.

It's now 2 minutes long and has Violin, Viola, Harp and Flute.

Version 2 - Tribute

Let me know what you think :-)

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Mike