Symphony No. 1 in F minor "Symphony of Spirals", Op. 8: work begins

Recently decided to make a symphony after being inspired by tchaikovsky shostakovich and many others. I have begun work on the first two movements and would like some feedback on them so far. Im aware much of the notation is wrong. Im still just sketching things out.

Edited February 7, 20251 yr by Gabriel Carlisle

Hey @Gabriel Carlisle!

Glad to see you're ambitious enough to have taken on the task of writing a symphony!  I love the dramatic introduction in the Largo mesto 1st movement!  The strings bring the tension up slowly until the breaking point which is punctuated by a forceful and dissonant tutti chord (or what seems like a tutti - I'm not following along with the score since you said that much of the notation is wrong).  The quiet Clarinet solo at 5:42 sets quite a bleak mood before being soon taken over by the Violins.

The 2nd movement truly does sound threatening and unnerving.  I love the dramatic orchestration at 1:40 which expands on your previously exposited harmonic skeleton.  The flute/piccolo line sounds really maniacal.

To talk a little bit about your composition method:  it seems you like to write disconnected fragments of music much like Prokofiev did.  The big variations project that I'm working on right now is also coming together the same way with lots of individual files/fragments that I'll put together once I work out more of the material.  They end up coming together like puzzle pieces that way.  The thing that might be difficult is transitions.  If you modulate to different keys, bridging two separate fragments together might pose a challenge if you have to modulate.  Or you might be forced to transpose one of the fragments to facilitate an easier transition.  That's fine too but would just entail extra work.  The way I deal with all that in my variations piece is to fashion circular sequences/modulations into each variation so it ends up modulating back to the original key it started in.  That way the puzzle pieces will fit together easier if the beginning and the end are all in the same key already (or close to the same key - you can use closely related keys like the dominant, subdominant or mediant or submediant key).  That's what I mean by having each section be composed in a modular fashion in our discussion on discord a while back.  Thanks for sharing and good luck on your further progress!