Aos Sí - Piano Quintet for Halloween

Dear all,

Wow - that's an interesting topic for me - Halloween - never wrote a piece for an festival. 

To make this work more relavent to the work, I did some research to understand more about Halloween.

Anyways, here is my thoughts writing this work:

I have always known very little for the Halloween festival. To many, Halloween is a festival that focuses on pranking, customing and candies - but there is a long history with mysteries around Aos Sí, the Irish name for a supernatural race in Gaelic folklore, similar to elves. Here are some information from different sources: - Every year, Samhain is celebrated on 31 October – 1 November. During this liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned, Aos Sí could more easily come into this world and were particularly active. Aos Sí were appeased to ensure the people and livestock survived the winter. The souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. From 16th century, there is a tradition in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales, where people going house-to-house in costume reciting verses or songs for food. Some impersonated the Aos Sí, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf. Often, a man dressed as láir bhán, a white horse, and led the younf people for the activity. If the household donated food it could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'; not doing so would bring misfortune. "...In 19th century Ireland, "candles would be lit and prayers formally offered for the souls of the dead. After this the eating, drinking, and games would begin"." These history and myths formed the basis for the plot of this work.

HoYin

Wow...this is awesome!! Very fitting for the competition, and so much color and technique. The Bach quote was clever 😄 

Great job man, wonderfully written!

Hi @HoYin Cheung! 

The use of extended technique is flawless and well fitting to the Halloween mood, and the style is very much Bartokian with some very percussive passages (the col legno). I really like the F section. The strings sound very much like an organ itself which fits to be "In a church"! Very professional scoring and engraving as well. Thx for sharing!

Henry

Thank you! Hope you all enjoy it!

7.5/10

nice! quite a fitting piece. there is a lack of theme though. some interesting chords and great texture.

Average: 6.875 Below

11 minutes ago, TristanTheTristan said:

nice! quite a fitting piece. there is a lack of theme though. some interesting chords and great texture. Average: 6.875 Below

Melodies Themes Motives	Harmony Chords Textures	Form Development Structure Time	Originality Creativity	Score Presentation	Instrumentation Orchestration Playability	Execution of Given Challenge	Taste
4	8.5	9.5	7	7.5	7	6.5	5

 

 

In the modern landscape, this, to me, was refreshing to listen to. I have experienced listening to bad post-tonal works where my peer thought more noise and crazy writing benefited the music or hall being played. I appreciate the landscape you painted and would not mind listening to this again in the future.

Of course, on an objective level, this piece is difficult. I think it would be effective when played live, however, I would be the one to pass off learning it and give it to the next musician due to the ensemble difficulty lol. When applying it to Halloween, I think you have succeeded. Maybe not in the terms of the 'trick or treat' or lighthearted celebration that happens each year, but in terms of capturing the eerie and scary images a haunted house or creepy film shows. Good work!

1 hour ago, MK_Piano said:

In the modern landscape, this, to me, was refreshing to listen to. I have experienced listening to bad post-tonal works where my peer thought more noise and crazy writing benefited the music or hall being played. I appreciate the landscape you painted and would not mind listening to this again in the future.

@MK_Piano Thank you for your kind reply. I hope my music is still pleasant to "post-tonal" ears. I treat it as a compliment when audience tell me they are willing to revisit - that means there are some places of work that is worth memorizing. While in the post-tonal context, while there are lots of idea I want to express in my work, I agree that there should only be "necessary" details in the writing - audience should be able to enjoy the work with their ears - instead of intelligently enjoying the tuplets or excessive dynamic markings by compulsively referring to the score.🫠

1 hour ago, MK_Piano said:

Of course, on an objective level, this piece is difficult. I think it would be effective when played live, however, I would be the one to pass off learning it and give it to the next musician due to the ensemble difficulty lol. 

Gosh, I apologize for the double stops. I hope all violinists and pianist will forgive me for the effect.😆

1 hour ago, MK_Piano said:

When applying it to Halloween, I think you have succeeded. Maybe not in the terms of the 'trick or treat' or lighthearted celebration that happens each year, but in terms of capturing the eerie and scary images a haunted house or creepy film shows. Good work!

While this work will be a part of my larger set of project "Festive",  I do want to make it distinctive from other few works. So yes, I am writing this Halloween music with a storyline and realistically refering to the tradition - glad to hear from you I might have succeeded to convey the idea. Thank you!

Average Score:9 very good

The chromatic double stops in 1st violin might cause some to throw the score at you. 

Hi, HoYin Cheung! Bear with me for a small while this time.

11 hours ago, Kvothe said:

The chromatic double stops in 1st violin might cause some to throw the score at you. 

Couldn't resist to quote this, I think it's a very good way to define the difficulty of some parts of this score. It doesn't seem to be an easy feat for neither the strings nor the pianist (perhaps the pianist has less trouble than the violin though!).

I am in partial agreement with @MK_Piano here. I do appreciate the atmosphere you created in some parts (the piano solo w/pedal part for example), but after a couple of listenings, and while being true that "I wouldn't mind listening to it again" (and so I did, many times already), there is essentially nothing that makes or would make me gravitate towards this piece enough to listen to it much longer. At this point, I may have heard hundreds of these pieces, part here at YC or other forums such as free-scores, part LIVE, and while I honestly think you did a good job with the score and you probably took a while to write all of this... Truth is, that after the less and less likely initial surprise/shock it went directly to the same far away place in my mind that I am no longer curious to explore or remember. It just melt, liquid; fused with an immeasurable and diffuse blob of notes, clusters and dissonances that are all different yet they feel the very same and which time has taught me to withstand but never to enjoy.

Truth is, I very rarely enjoy "contemporary" pieces of this kind, more of a mesh of dissonances stained with interesting material than anything else. They almost always simply "go through", and this one was sadly no exception. However, I would say the ending of this piece was ok, which is five to ten orders of magnitude better than what I usually think of ending sections/passages/bars of pieces that more weakly or strongly (I guess that's again subjective) resemble your piece.

And as a rule of thumb with all pieces that come with a description first, I tend to have a listen or two before I read it. Now it would be impossible to me to tell you if reading it beforehand would have influenced me enough to be in agreement with what you claim to portray with your piece, but by having done the opposite process I can guarantee you that from my humble and maybe very wrong opinion (not only because I am not familiarised with Gaelic culture but because I am familiarised with the particular sound of this particular style of contemporary music) this piece did not evoke anything related with the story, not any more than other pieces or parts in pieces like...Dunno:
• String Quartet No.1 - Javier Torres Maldonado
• Ligeti: String quartet No.2 - Arditti quartet.

Just in case, I am not sure if these are composers of reference (they ain't very famous but they ain't precisely unknown either) or that they do mimic your work, this is not what I tried to convey here. Finally and despite my not very benvolent words I would still judge your piece at least one or two orders of magnitude above any section of these two examples I have provided had they been brought to this informal cozy contest, so they may not do justice to the work of yours.
All in all, thank you for your submission!

Best regards,
Daniel–Ø.

Ah, I caught that Toccata and Fugue in D minor Reference lol 

Subjectively, I feel this piece could've been made much more enjoyable to listen through all the way, had you made different choices with harmony, in this work! While I understand the goal is to capture "Halloween" as a theme, every bar in this score seems to have some level of dissonance. Especially in the "F" section. You begin with a nice, but lonely piano texture, then comes in the strings, like nails on a chalkboard, much like most of the piece presents itself, in the strings. 

In my humble opinion, I feel when it comes to music, even the music that's meant to elicit a feeling of unrest, suspense, or thrill such as the Halloween theme should represent, finding a way to balance out dissonance with consonance is a very important aspect in creating something that can be enjoyed by everyone, or utilized within other works of art such as film for example. Telling a clear story using melodic textures that are able to be naturally resonated with is Important, if you were to ask me. 

Otherwise, the score had interesting ideas that should be commended. I will have to agree with much of the feedback that Daniel @Omicronrg9 has left behind for you to review. Thank you for sharing! 

Average Score: 5.25

Hello @Omicronrg9 @MK_Piano @UncleRed99 Thank you, my friend, for your generous comment. It must have taken your time to type all of these - which shows your pursue and love for music, as we all do on this community. But what are we pursuing in compositions?  I really want to talk deeper in this matter, and please feel free to continue in this post. 

I don't think a piece like this can fit metrics such as Melody, or Harmony, so I will just give you my thoughts. I love the use of articulations, I feel like its a great way to make a piece sound more authentic. The score is beautiful, and interesting to look through (since you use articulation marks). Is this playable? Probably! But it looks really hard. My favorite part was when the piano came in, and brought a false sense of security and peace. That part is awesome! And nice homage to Bach's Fugue and Toccata to conclude that (somewhat) peaceful, but eerie piano section! There is so much dissonance, but you do introduce some clarity as well, the mix is something I find quite interesting. Does it remind me of Halloween? Yes! At the 1 minute mark, this part in particular, reminds me of a chase scene. At 1:33, with the parallel octaves, I felt it was a good way to break the chase scene (as if the person being chased is looking around for safety). 

Not sure if anyone picked up on this...we all know at 3:18 we hear Bach's theme. But at 3:23, we hear it again, listen closely!

Very cool piece!

Entry:  Aos Si - Piano Quintet for Halloween by @HoYin Cheung

Average Score:  7.81

Review:

Riddled with glissandi and Bartok pizzicati this piece is very intense and creepy!  You’re steeped in extended techniques and scattered among your score are lots of little character indications such as “Trick or treat?” and “Treat!” etc. which don’t necessarily add anything to the audible performance.  It’s fun though!  And I get that you’re trying to add more expression but I think you’re going overboard.  Especially with the tempo markings at 129 (three measures before H).  It’s overkill to put so many expressive tempo markings in succession to each other.  The only way these kinds of indications make sense is if they also refer to the character of a certain section of music.  But here there are no audible changes of character.  Instead you could have written an accel. into measure 130 beat 2, a rit. into 131 and an accel. again into 132 with tempo marked with metronome markings only.  Speaking still of the score, in chamber music it is customary to put the piano at the bottom of the score with the strings going at the top.  But as far as the Halloween theme is concerned it certainly works quite well!  There is drive and intensity to this piece as well as motivic development and repetition.  And plenty of tortured gestures from the strings especially.  Great job!

Taken into account how much work you invested to achieve such a piece (including the thorough examination of the backgrounds and myths of Aos Si - as you explain in your introduction), you should earn a 10.

However, I must agree with the comments by  @MK_Piano and @Omicronrg9 in that way, that it’s not easy to remember the piece pushing me to listen to it again and again.

„Post-tonal“ works are not worse than more traditional ones, but due to the lack of tonality, the texture and the overall structure of the piece are crucial in allowing the audience to follow the piece and imagine a picture or story in their minds. Maybe your story – while perfectly matching the subject of the Halloween competition – is too diffuse or too complicated to create clear synapses with unambiguous „landmarks“ of the piece (the only „landmark“ I remember was the Bach-quotation).

Average Score: 7.125