Kingsfold

A woodwind quintet based on the old English folk tune "Kingsfold" transcribed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Several popular church hymns use this tune such as "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say" and "O Sing a Song of Bethlehem." It is a quasi-fantasia style with the melody being constant throughout being traded amongst the different instruments as events in the music allow. This piece is slated for a reading by "Space Lab", a New York City-based Woodwind quintet dedicated to solely new music, next month on January 21, 2010. Comments welcome and do enjoy!

Kingsfold

I love your idea in this. The piece sounds good.. but I think a little chromaticism would especially bring it to life and add a little more spice and color. Hope you post us the performance!

simple but effective. Its a kind of folk melody. A IV-I cadence works lovely to end the last phrase

I could sum up all the good things (gradual increase of momentum, instrumentation and interplay, and more) but there are a few things the maybe could be improved...

I hear a quint parallel, and it bothers me since you seem to have chosen a common practice idiom (ms 18, and several other places, same verse-line each time) I would have given the clarinet a B and A in the second beat, but maybe this is already too much momentum in this stage of the piece?

Ok, second item. The 6/4 at ms 35 feels not right.

The C section: tuplets is good (but where are they at ms 54.3-55.1?). Harmonically I didn't like the progression III - IV (ms 50) (espc the high E in the flute felt unnatural) I think the progression at ms 54 is better. At least more pleasing, conventional ;)

The canonic treatment in D works especially the latter half. At first it sounded a bit wrought. When I try a canonic passage I like to try a canon in terts of quint. Did you try this? maybe it results in interesting harmonies...

One final great moment was the delayed picardian terts. You expect him to be, it is not there yet at ms 80, but finaly it is at 82. very nice!

Overall, nice score, including rehearsal marks. The legato phrasing is accurate, especially when you leave the original choral line and include new material.

Nicely done.

Woo, nice orchestration and great song! :) Makes very good feelings to me. Christmas music rules!

Thanks for the comments guys. They were very helpful.

UPDATE:

I've added the Space Lab recording and a fresh score with some subtle detail changes.

Congrats on getting a real recording. The recording isn't the best in the world, but it makes a great demo. Everything sounded good with the ensemble except I didn't feel they did a great job capturing the triplet feel. The piece sounds very much in the style of Holst or Vaughn Williams.. I think you did a nice job here.

You have made me have a power to compose , because you write the harmony was beautiful, thank you for your sharing

Oh I like the tune - good start. Nice shape to it. There is a pastoral feel to this for sure. Maybe the first 'variation' needs to be a bit fuller as regards bass sound. A little thin. It is more like a passacaglia in this regard and the difficulty with these is maintaining interest and a recurring melody at the same time. I would alter the harmony a little more - to add variety - you have much potential with the modal quality of this tune and modal-based harmony can be very nice. I think though you know about how to arrange well for these instruments in general. Quite old world atmospheric too like Holst and RVW. Nice. Good work. It shows you worked on this.

Nice work, but I don't have anything of value to add from what's already been said: I think everything of real importance has already been covered :happy:

Absolutely gorgeous. I especially love the sound of the Oboe, Clarinet and Horn together at the start of page 2. Gorgeous.

On the final system of Page 2, I like the Horn descant. It's subtle, and doesn't overshadow the main melody and is beautiful in itself.

On Page 4, the semiquaver passages drift beautifully through each instrument. It possibly overshadows the melody here, but that might not really be a bad thing.

At the end, I'm wondering whether the sound is as good as it could be on Bar 80 with the flute so low with the other instruments also in their lower ranges where they're stronger.

Overall though, I absolutely love it. I love all the folk tunes that Vaughan-Williams arranged, and this arrangement is just as beautiful.

Nice arrangement, even though there isn't muhc in the way of hamronic movement or ''exploration''... the contrapuntal passages are all very well-done and are hugely effective. I think the basic theme is repeated too often at the beginning , though. Great work hones: