Christmas Suite: Overture

My name is Reese Revak, I'm currently a sophomore composition major at Temple University, and I'm new to this forum. One of my bigger compositional ambitions at this point consists of writing a suite for orchestra and voices based on episodes from the Christmas story from the gospel of Luke.

Here is the overture, the only completed piece so far. When finished, the suite will consist of this overture, an aria for soprano, harp, and strings, a motet for chorus and organ, another aria for soprano and full orchestra, an Interlude for the orchestra, a Chorale for a cappella chorus, a Pastoral for Men's Chorus and English Horn, and a finale for full chorus and orchestra.

The overture is based on a tranquil theme that I thought should depict the peaceful mood of the night of the first Christmas. After a triumphant climax of this noble theme, a fugue begins. This fugue, which was inspired much by French organ music of the 19th century- especially Saint-Saens- is a powerful and driving contrast to the opening section, and it comes to a halt on a colossal diminished chord. The entire orchestra then cuts off, leaving the organ sustaining a low pedal note. The organ then launches into a purely classically derived cadenza. Eventually the other instruments come back with fanfares of all kinds coming from every corner of the orchestra. Soon, everything dies down and the organ is left alone to set the mood for the first aria.

NOTE: The ending will sound a little awkward because this overture is meant to segue right into the next movement without pause. Hopefully it will make more sense once I am able to complete the second movement and post it here.

xmas.MID

xmas.MUS

Let me first state that I really liked your piece!

The song overall is intriguing and would sound very good actually played. You don't have an mp3, do you? The midi is kind of killing me, and it's hard to distinguish dynamics. I really like that you don't overuse the strings or let them get caught up in too much chord support. Measures 18/19 are really nice. Measures in the 60's really remind me of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, which is a good thing--to criticize, it is hard to grasp an melody or something in the song to hold onto--there is very little reoccurring in the piece. This, of course, is probably due to the piece being the overture and thus more of an introduction. For me, (though my style is rather repetitious) the song does not sit by itself as a complete song--as a movement, though, it is fantastic.

Thanks a lot. Yes, I'm trying to find ways to incorporate them many themes of this piece into the larger work. This is sort of tough, since most of the time composers like to write their overtures after they've written everything else, but hopefully I'll find a way.