The 9 Muses - Urania; 'Of Heaven'

Hi everyone! I'm currently trying to write 9 pieces for piano and flute based on the Nine Muses: Greek goddesses of the arts. I finished the first one a couple of days ago: Urania, the muse of heaven. Urania is able to foretell the future by the arrangement of the stars. The piece is structured as a day. It begins with a peaceful morning-theme which ends in a joyful sunny afternoon. After this, the evening begins and one by one stars fill the sky. The evening-theme transforms into a whirling night and eventually leads to a repeat of the soft morning-theme. I hope I will be able to finish the other Muses as well, but let's start with this one. I hope you'll comment, so I can learn from my mistakes :)Thanx!!KoenEdit: seperate flute part uploadedThe 9 Muses - Urania; 'Of Heaven'

The 9 Muses - Urania; 'Of Heaven'

How funny, I started writing a suite on this same topic for reduced orchestra about 2 years ago. It's sitting in a folder, untouched. I'm curious to see how you'll capture each muse. Perhaps I'll be inspired to pull my work out and dust it off. Can't wait to hear!

This...is... Gorgeous!!! Holy lord! (no pun intended). I mean... such beautiful structure and such a great story is told through the different moods!

If I had to comment on things to fix...I mean, this is nitpicky but I guess I could name a few.

Measure 94, the "affetuoso" section, I thought was rather boring. The flute and piano basically in unison and sitting on a really long stream of dotted quarters...I felt like the flute could be doing a LITTLE bit more. Just a little bit more.

I also think the flute cadenza was too short and frankly not that amazing. I know you're capable of reworking that because of how incredible the whole piece is before it.

Other than that...Great work! I'm looking forward to the other movements...or goddesses!

-Keeg

Having now listened. This is a lovely piece of music. Very pleasant to listen to. Here are a few parts I especially enjoyed:

112-115. Love that passage with the flute and piano in harmony. It was just very well placed in the context of the music in my opinion.

m.8-9. I love the piano "twinkling" underneath the sustained flute. I wish it had happened more or at least once more at the end when the original theme returned. Alas, it never did. Your call, I was just hoping it would happen again cause I wanted to hear it again.

In other thoughts, mm 19-36 felt ploddy to me. I don't know if this was purposeful, but it just seemed like such a long period of the same thing in the accompaniment and I was wondering when the next section would come just to hear something different. I even considered fast forwarding and had the piece been longer overall, I would have more than likely skipped to the next musical idea. Just my opinion.

It seems like you have put a lot of thought into a seamless flute part, and it sounds that way. You may want to look into adding breath marks, so a performer would break the lines exactly where you want. In these long phrases at such slow tempos and in the lower register of the instrument, several breaths would be necessary and you haven't given any rests in some places, for example 114-135 you have no rests marked. I understand that sometimes the legato phrase markings can infer where the breath could fit nicely, but in listening to this, there are obvious places where you wouldn't want a breath, even though the phrase mark stops and begins again. I know sometimes this is forgotten because the flute sample (which sounds great btw, what library do you use (both the flute and piano sound really nice(even if the articulations aren't the best)) can play on forever without any break and in playback, it's a finished piece that is perfectly rendered, more or less.

Anywho, I love this, it's very pleasant to listen to...so much so that I wish there was a way to put it on my itunes. I could sleep to this! Haha :lol: Great job. Can't wait to hear more.

Edited March 19, 201115 yr by OMWBWAY

Thank you for the extensive replies! I think it is a good idea for me to have a look at certain piano accompaniment parts you named and the flute affetuoso part in order to prevent it from being boring. More variation might do the trick :thumbsup: I'll also have a look at the short 'cadenza' and maybe a repeat of the twinkling piano when the morning-theme appears again.

I do have a seperate flute part in which I've added breath marks and some slightly different articulations. Does anyone now if I can upload multiple PDF-files in one topic?

Thanx again for the tips!! I'm glad you liked it, that means a lot to me!

Btw, I've been using Finale 2007 and the garritan personal orchestra as VST'. I have absolutely no experience with sequencing and stuff like that, so it might sound a bit awkward here and there.

I liked this, but I think you could work on connecting the multitude of themes, and prepare them a little better. For example I love the pedal point of the opening. But when you move to the Dominant it sounds really awkward to me, like it is not fitting in the meter.

You can add multiple movements by stating this is a 'movement holder' Then you can add multiple movements, and separate parts as well