Piano Concerto

Concerto in G Major for Piano and Orchestra. My first. I wrote this about a year ago and have decided to return and edit it with better musical knowledge. Enjoy!

Piano Concerto

I haven't had the time to listen to your concerto. One quick question. Is there a reason you post the movements seperate? You can join them in one (using movement owner).

It gets off to a bit of a rocky start, but I like where it's going. Once you flesh out the orchestration, I think it'll be more impressive.

On that note however: this is where midi hurt more than helps. It lies; it makes volumes equal across the board when this is not true. When you're doubling your winds, you want your flute above the oboe. Flute on the staff is very dark and velvety, but soft; it'll be buried by the oboe. When you're filling out chords, you want the flute or violin to be playing the soprano for projection. When you double the flute and oboe, you might try splitting them into octaves instead of unison.

Musically, you have some very nice material. You set up a lot of really good antecedents, but then don't answer them. One suggestion: at the end, when you state the theme in an orchestral voice, try echoing the statement again in another voice (oboe then violins) to give it more shape and a little contrast.

Definitely a good start. You have your melodic and harmonic structures in place, now it's about fleshing the orchestration out. I really want to hear it when it's finished.

Since you told me that you do, indeed, have printmusic, maybe you are unfamiliar with what a standard orchestral set up is?

Generally, you have two of each of: Flute (One can be a piccolo, or you can have a third musician play piccolo, or none at all), Oboe, Clarinet (Most often Bb but when the situation calls for it, a Clarinet in A can be used), Bassoon, and Trumpet.

There are usually four horns, and percussion is flexible - Often times just a timpani is used. You can also add tuba, baritone, trombones, and whatever you think is necessary. I've seen these in and out of some scores.

There are two sections for violins, one for viola, one for cello, and one for basses. with multiple musicians in each section. I can't remember what the standard amount for a string section is, but I think it's somewhere between 8-12... I'm not certain atm...

As far as the piece goes, aside from the orchestration issues mentioned previously, I think you could've added some variation in dynamics, and theme. With the instruments you wrote for there isn't the color and vibrancy expected of a full orchestra, so #1 you should either call it something else or put additional instruments in, seeing as how you can't have an orchestra with seven instruments and #2 add contrast and interest with tension/release, and more variation.

Thanks for posting!!

-MF

Well, it's certainly ambitious! I see that MF has directed you towards the proper arrangement for score layout. This really is important because if you want people to be able to read what you have written, you need to have things ordered in the right way. Just examine the scores of concerti for reference.

Now about the music. I'll leave detailed analysis to the experts, but I would like to add one thing. When you write a concerto -- for any instrument or group of instruments -- you need to always keep in mind that you are writing something that contrasts the single voice against the group. In other words, you have to decide how you want these two groups of sound to interact with one another. Obviously, the solo gets a lot of preferential treatment, but you should weave it in and out of the material for the larger mass. How do you want to set the solo voice apart from the orchestra? How do you make that solo voice as dramatic as you can with the material you are writing? These are questions you need to ask yourself.

Think of it maybe in terms of a plain song -- voice and piano. Do you want people to be paying attention to the voice and lyrics or the interesting stuff going on around it? How and when do you want the focus to shift?

Well, keep at it. We all start off with some pretty far-reaching goals.

Sincerely,

Brian