Cassazione in B flat major op. 135

Hello folks!

Here I present to you one of my old works(2007)... It is my third "Cassazione" in the classical style of the late 18th century.

It is scored for:

2 Oboes (1 has solo part in the 5th movement)

2 Horns in B flat

1 bassoon (ad libitum)

Violins I

Violins II

Violas

Cellos

Basses

It is written in 7 movements:

I. Marcia

II. Allegro molto

III. Adagio cantabile

IV. Menuetto e trio

V. Andante

VI. Menuetto e trio

VII. Finale: Allegro assai - Andante - Allegro assai - Andante - Marcia

hope you all will like it

https://youtu.be/SaperHEVNq8

I'll be listening to the entire thing later today, but so far, this sounds like typical classical-period idiom, which I haven't heard in a long time :santa:

I'll be listening to the entire thing later today, but so far, this sounds like typical classical-period idiom, which I haven't heard in a long time :santa:

Yes it is classical idiom, you're right... and I am going to add this info in the panel so people wont get confused or just wonder what style it is.

As with all your uploads I've seen, this is near-perfect, but why do you choose to compose in a classical idiom? What draws you towards that?

I have always had a fascination for the Classical era in all its aspects and my city, Naples, is full of that kind of art and always has been a central venue for that time for all Italian classical music, the Neapolitan School for instance, having there the best conservatories, the biggest theatre in Europe (which is still the biggest oldest opera house still working and which had no change whatsoever) and all the art and culture it was brought here, the presence of the first and oldest public university system in the world, the abundance of art from Greek, Roma and other older civilization... which brought the start of the modern archaeology with the beginning of the excavation of the ruins in Pompei and Herculaneum.

My father made me aware of all this and more, so my interest in that kind of thing grew up exponentially, and always thanks to him, I got to love classical music since he bought me some cassette of Mozart music, of whom never before I really cared about, but his music captured me, and this made me go on buy more music and listen to it. This was in 1998.

Here in Italy, when you go to middle school (you are between 11 and 14) you have to study also music, play the recorder and learn a bit about history of music, in high school they don't do that any more and I think it is a HUGE loss.

Anyway it happened in that time, 1998, when I was 13, that I got the music from my dad and I started learning a bit more about it.

In 1999, once done with middle school, I started studying music theory on my own during summer and while going to high school, and this lead me, in December 1999 to write my first little pieces for keyboard, so it went the same all through 2000, and finally in January 2001 I bought my piano and I started taking lessons in piano playing up to June 2002 then I did change teacher and I got a professor in composition, from September 2002 to June 2003, then I went on on my own up to now...

All this always being inspired by the music of the 18th century, because so far it is the only one that speaks to me and makes my heart speak, it is my first language, the one that comes naturally out of me. I have been studying other composers too, mainly people of the late 18th century, and also some of the early 19th, but I also listen to other things as well, even some contemporary music, in fact I took a semester in Los Angeles, in 2007, studying contemporary classical music composition, but there at USC they are just too much "modernist academic" so pretending to be open-minded, but totally missing the point of that and just oriented into film music, which is something I would do as hobby being it not my goal in life.

At the end what matter most should be, and I don't really know why almost NOBODY wants to understand this (that's why we still have racial problems), the fact that you have to do what you heart tells you, and try to understand the others without suffocating them, accept the different opinions, listen to them and try to be understanding.

hey , i love classical era music! , you did a great job , this is really good , could you post the score so that we could learn from you?

At the end what matter most should be, and I don't really know why almost NOBODY wants to understand this (that's why we still have racial problems), the fact that you have to do what you heart tells you, and try to understand the others without suffocating them, accept the different opinions, listen to them and try to be understanding.

Amen. I imagine the academic circle isn't too fond of you writing 18th-century era pieces... :blink:

To tell you the truth I had some kind of debate with my composition teacher at that school in LA, in where she was asserting that it was not too much worth to write in that old idiom and change for something more new and recent (to which I may agree up to a certain degree); but if I have to do something I don't like just to make you professor happy, well, for what it means to me, you can hit your head in the wall as many times as you want but I won't change my ideas and do it AT ALL, because it is written nowhere that I have to adhere to what YOU think works in your head.

If that would be convenient for me as well and gain something from it, them maybe I'd do it.. but since it gives me no use, I'm not going to do that.

Basically she said that, such music, will never be really performed on a wide range because it is somewhat out of fashion and we are no more in the 18th century, so I have to "evolve".

To that I asked her if she had any of her "evolved" pieces performed, and she said she had once performed one work when she was studying in Santa Cecilia conservatory in Rome, and then I asked, how many times did that work get a performance and how many times other places asked for it? And she had nothing to say to that but that she had it performed at Santa Cecilia because of her finals at the master in composition.

So I thought that being a professor coming from a great institution (thus having the kind of recommendation you need to go to any theatre or other kind of venue), and knowing so many people, mostly musicians and composers, and not to have your own work performed, it is a real shame.

And it is more shameful to:

1) Profess a progress in music and then deliberating using ideas and constructs that were part of the poetic of the beginning of the 20th century and calling it new and modern.

2) Impose your ideas on other people without considering their own ones instead of hypothetically try to make them work together, the "new" and "old" ones (this would be more of an evolution).

So I think that with all the willingness they have (those professors/composers) to make this new music known to the world, and with all the links they have with the musical world such as theatres, cultural circles, television, radio etc. why then they don't just go out and put together an ensemble and make people aware of their ideas and culture??

It has to be just linked to the vile money?

Is it possible that people (in this case these professors/composers & performers) just think on the immediate income than on the one, bigger, coming from the long run??

Any enterprise is based on a capital and on a certain risk, and if you don't risk exposing yourself and loosing a bit, then you won't gain nothing afterwards.

If people don't know you, they won't like you, and if you present them awkward things to which they are not used to, they will surely go for something they can recognize and like.

It is like advertisement. Any product, from the most to the least useful one, if it has not a good advertisement campaign, a constant one, people won't know it and won't buy it whether or not they need it!

How many theatres in the world do play "contemporary music" by either contemporary living and/or not living composers??

How many seasons of such theatres are JUST AND ONLY based entirely on contemporary music??

I know that some little theatres do sporadically play contemporary music, or, RARELY, big theatres do have one or two pieces of contemporary composers, which are usually the death ones...

...but, why it has to be that way???

SO, since I either compose modern or classical, I still won't get my music performed as much and widely as the little bunch of classic composers that do, then, why I have to do something I don't like when I gain nothing back from it???

That's why I say people should be free of expressing themselves, artistically, in the best way they can and in the way they like, without judging others. Is it that hard?

We can argue from now to year 5000 about to which kind of thing is best (new or old fashion) but we will both end up at the same place and not having one work performed, not having any argumentation resolved from either side, and just gain stress and a bad peptic ulcer for our delicate stomach, which is the least we would like to get! :P

I wasn't arguing, I think I seconded what you said in my post before. You're also right about the ulcers. :P

hahah I know you were not arguing!!! I was just saying my ideas, and I got a bit too much "passionate" about them :-P sorry!

Maybe the "We can argue from now to year 5000 about to which kind of thing is best (new or old fashion) but we will both end up at the same place and not having one work performed, not having any argumentation resolved from either side, and just gain stress and a bad peptic ulcer for our delicate stomach, which is the least we would like to get!" mislead you! when I wrote "we can argue..." and "we will both..." I didn't mean me and you, but in general, we all debating, no side will really win. :)

I'm Italian, so I still don't use the proper parts of speech and english speaker would, so maybe that's where it is the confusion.

Nice piece, I love the Classical Era!

I only listened to the first movement, I'll probably listen to more later. The one thing I noticed: The oboes occasionally seemed too strong, like they were sticking out.

What did you use to write/record this?

-MF

thank you for liking it, I'm very happy with this work and I suggest you to listen to the second movement rather than the first, being it just a little march...

Anyway for recording it I just used finale 2008a and garritan personal orchestra full edition, but not the last one, I think the one from 2004.

For the strings I used the solos, building up an ensemble, instead for the horn and oboe I used the solos but putting the polyphony to 2, so I could play 2 notes at the same time and pretend it were 2 instruments. so what you hear is the right amount of instruments I would use for real, that is:

2 oboes

2 horns

1 basson

5 violins I

5 violins II

4 violas

3 cellos

2 basses

For a total of 24 players.

But the problem I am having with the sounds is that I can't really balance them well so, sometimes the violins, when you make staccato, they sound very silent, so I have to put other hidden marks to make it more evident, but this makes them stick out too much, then the winds sound good but sometimes they are too much flat in sound, so they tend to cover other instruments and are not very clear between themselves.

If I set them with a lower volume, they can't be heard and it makes everything muddy.

If I set them with a higher volume, then they cover other things and the melody gets unclear and the result is just a mess...

Sometimes the program itself makes it sound different, so, with the same exact ensemble, it may sound way different! (when I made this one work, once the second movement was done, it sounded quite clear, so I copied that file, deleted all the staves and wrote in the other movements using those same settings that worked clear, and the result?? magically it sounds different from one movement to the other :( )

So if there's another option I could use, maybe other settings I shall apply to the instruments or maybe a total new soundfont library, I will be very happy to get it.

One thing I would like to be able to do, if the case of a different library, would be the ability to build up ensembles like in garritan, using the solos and making them look like an ensemble, because when I use the "violin I ensemble" (not the one I made putting just the solos in) , it sounds good too, but the problem with it is that they are sampled for modern orchestras, so with 15 violins I, when in my works sometimes I want just 4 and some others I want 5 or 6 or 10 violins.

Thank you in advance for any help in this precise matter :)

I wish I could make the old GPO sound that good :blink:

that good how?? If you refer to the way I make them sound... honestly I don't like it, and unfortunately I don't have the financial power to buy a little more advanced library!

And on the library thing I would say that not even the big brands have all the instruments sampled in a decent way, so maybe one should use all the instruments of all the libraries and just pick the ones that sound more decent and realistically, but then another problem arises that is, will they all be compatible to one another?

Some are sampled more loudly than others, some have a different timber that might not blend well, plus some will use more resources than others, or react in a different way according to the setting the software-house created for it.

Hard hard task :(

Trust me, I prefer the default Finale instruments to GPO because I can't get them to sound better most of the time..

unless you mean the midi sounds in finale, the finale GPO is the same as the full one, just there are some missing instruments, some more solos in the strings and winds, and maybe some little more into other sections, but the basic is just there...

unless you mean the midi sounds in finale, the finale GPO is the same as the full one, just there are some missing instruments, some more solos in the strings and winds, and maybe some little more into other sections, but the basic is just there...

No, I find the default MIDI to be more reliable...

Hmm they might be reliable but they sound BAD, honestly TOO BAD!! :lol:

Sometimes I use the MIDI, together with the garritan ambience to supply the choir voices and using the elctric piano sound to mimic the fortepiano and sometimes I use also the trombones and horns when I need a certain range that the default horn doesn't have.

MIDI is good for some things but honestly I really hate it!

MIDI is good for some things but honestly I really hate it!

Ah well, at least getting a live performance is always satisfying...

Yeah, I wish I had the money to do that, or willing people to make me this much happy of a live performance!

I was thinking of making my own ensemble (I use ensemble because orchestra would sound a bit too much, but in reality is that what I mean! hihihih let's play humble though! :santa: )

It's hard to find players... and some want to see money, which understand! But sooner or later maybe I will be that lucky to have this one or any other performed.... hopefully...

.... one day....

...if ever!