Piano quintet in G sharp minor – 2025 Halloween Competition Submission

This is my contribution to the YCF Fall 2025 Halloween competition:

First the story:

On the last evening of October, you take a walk to the nearby urban forest. In the shade of the trees, dimly lit by moonlight and distant streetlights, you spot five figures. They're not ghosts or other sinister creatures, but musicians who – somewhat awkwardly, like marionettes – are performing their Halloween serenade.

All this puppets – while playing perfectly together – have their own character: The pianist hides behind his slightly out-of-tune piano. The flute player trembles a little nervously, while the horn player sometimes blares loudly, the clarinetist and the bassoonist alternate between playful and calm roles.

After the last melancholic chord has faded away, the wind picks up, swirling the leaves on the forest floor. The rain begins to fall and the illusion disappears into the mist.

Now some musical explanations about the piece:

The piece is derived from my Prelude XVIII in G sharp minor, arranged as a piano quintet with woodwinds as the accompanying instruments, in that particular case flute, clarinet, French horn and bassoon. For me, the key of G sharp minor has a mystical and gloomy character and since the piece features many dissonances and rich chromaticism - together with the usage of the tritone as a central interval – it seems to fit perfectly with the subject of the competition.

Here is the structure of the piece, composed in sonata form:

0:07, mm. 1 – Exposition, 1st Theme: The first thematic material (highlighted in purple) consists of a quartet of chromatic runs and syncopations that can be easily be distributed among the four woodwind instruments, achieving a playful character – in spite of the dissonances.

1:02, [E], mm. 30 – Exposition, 2nd Theme: As the second theme (highlighted in blue) I quote the subject of the subsequent Fugue XVIII in A flat minor in a rather chorale-like and calm form.

1:25, [G], mm,46 – Exposition, Codetta: Repetitive notes (highlighted in green) form the thematic material of the codetta, first in chords accompanied by the bassoon, and finally as a tutti.

1:52, [H], mm.55 – Development: In the short development section, the augmented second subject and the chromatic runs and syncopations from the first theme interwove together.

2:40, [K], mm. 78 – Recapitulation: In the recapitulation, the instruments change their roles, picking up the voices from their counterparts and swapping solo vs. tutti sections to avoid a simple repetition of the exposition. The codetta with plaintive chords finally descends in a morendo to the minor triad.

Here is the score:

Piano quintet in G sharp minor

Entry: Piano quintet in G sharp minor

Review: 

The metrical stress of the composition switches between pattern 2, 3, and 5.  The meter in the composition are 4/8. 3/4, 6/8, and 5/4/.  These meters have different stress pattern and feel different.  It would wise to either stay the 8th is division: 4/8, 6/8, and 5/8 or switch to 2/4. 3/4, and 5/4.   Furthermore, it is hard to know where half point of each measure is.  In some measures, there are two 8th notes rests that can easily be a quarter rest, or two 16th rest that should be 8th rest. That would make easier to read in the piano part.   

In rehearsal H: you are implying both 2/4 and 4/8. It is hard to know what meter you are using.  I could not follow that section...   

Overall, in both score presentation and playability this will be score 6 for the reasons explained.   

The overall landscape of the piece was polyphonic, and it used atonal methods: possibly set class and others(?).  This will be score be 9 

The execution of a sonata form Exposition-Dev-Recap was well done. 10 

There were well crafted themes, motives, and melodic materials 10  (also for creativity).

This entry meet requirements of competition 10.

It was done well 10 

Average score: 8.8 Above Average/Good

Review:

I like the melodies and the unsettling feel of them

The chords feel very off, but that's probably just me being used to certain ones; but the texture is really good.

The structures pretty good, but the time does feel a little bit off...

this piece is pretty original but does use share some similarities with the other submissions.

the score is presented like any other so I'd say its pretty good.

seems very much like it could be played with some practice.

you executed it well with an introduction, a video, a MP3 and a score.

it does give halloweenish vibes and reminds me of background music for one of those old black and white cartoons where the characters don't talk, but a halloween special.

overall, 7.5

Hi @Wieland Handke!

I love the pointillistic touch of the whole piece, kind of like Klangfarbenmelodie. The piece doesn't sound tonal for me until the end when it ends in the G sharp minor, but it enhances the unsettling mood for it. Your use of motive is very tight and organized. I subjectively feel like the music somewhat lack drama for climax and passages less excited, and I feel like you can sometimes just reduce one or two instruments in certain passages for creating climax when all the instruments appear. The other thing is the horn, because in real performance the horn may easily overpower the other instruments especially in its forte/fortissimo passages so the balance need to be careful. The high register of flute and clarinet can also be established more frequently for the Halloween vibe!

Thx for joining the competition and sharing!

Henry

Entry:  Piano Quintet in G sharp minor - 2025 Halloween Competition Submission by @Wieland Handke

Average Score:  9.19

Review:

It’s a clever idea to use themes from your pre-existing series of preludes and fugues!  It makes your piece that much richer.  I like how you give a programmatic context also, for why the piece is for this particular instrumentation (and why you’re using a honky-tonk piano patch!  LoL)  The piece is certainly creepy and fits the Halloween theme quite well.  It’s easy for me to follow the various different recurring themes despite the complex harmonic language that you use.  And in the end I guess you included the sound of someone stepping through the leaves?  Besides that the ending did kind of sound like the music just stopped.  It seems like the piece could have ended at any of the short pauses/cadences that you have throughout the piece and it would have had the same effect.  But I guess it’s hard to make a piece sound truly conclusive in this kind of style.  Also, I noticed in the recording that there’s some grace notes present that I can’t see in the score - what did you intend there?  Thanks for your participation and good luck in the public voting polls!

Hi Wieland.

Nice video to begin with. The sounds are also very nice. Now, the score itself has even smaller margins than my own, so I'd be careful depending on the format whenever it comes to printing. You also suffer from classic overlaps caused by the notation software default configs such as: 

That aside, some pianists would argue that they prefer their own fingerings so they may ask you an un-fingered part. Some other will be grateful though 😀.


Now, regarding the piece itself, while I do catch some G# minor sections, I would argue that most of it seems detached from that key. I noticed lots of G naturals but few F double sharps, and I would say I heard more E minor and B-flat minor passages than G# minor throughout the piece. Maybe I’m mistaken, but as Henry said, this isn’t really a problem.

I can also see how the piece weaves together fragments introduced mostly at the beginning, and in theory it does what you describe in your technical explanation. However, while I appreciate their inherent potential to create a structure, I don’t really think they fully succeed in building one. After a couple of listens, I still don’t perceive it as something “complete” or well-structured, despite the explanation you provided and the fact that the elements you mention are indeed present. To my ear, it feels like patches of cement and bricks placed in the middle of an amalgam of sometimes more, sometimes less convincing waves of music...

The motives are definitely there, but I don’t find them more prominent than other material happening simultaneously—such as, for example, in the recapitulation, but imo it happens on the piece overall and if you didn't point them out some of them as different, I think I would have had a harder time distinguishing one another when intertwined with other material. In my opinion, there’s a lack of prioritization among the fragments, and that combined with how dissonant they are on their own creates an “uncanny” atmosphere that permeates large portions of the piece restlessly. While that can be effective, it becomes tiring to me, and I don’t feel this is resolved towards the end. Thus, the final passage is a no-no for me.

After a piece plagued with dissonances & chromatisms clashing and not letting you breathe much, a final G#m conclusion comes all in a sudden despite the morendo. Don't get me wrong— It's not a very bad final passage, not at all, but I don't see it, once again, well connected with the piece overall.

On the other hand, I would say this piece feels more Halloween-like than others I’ve listened to recently, which also make use of dissonances not only on the melodic plane, but also on the rhythmic and textural planes.

All in all, a piece I honestly did not enjoy but that I did not dislike either. Many thanks for submitting your piece to this competition and good luck!

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ø.

This is a rather technical, and complex piece.  After listening to this a few times, the motifs, structure and flow made a lot of sense. It's interesting, because each time I gave this a listen, the music became less dissonant to my ears!

Melody: While you do have a clear motive, due to how short it is, I would have liked to hear possibly another theme. But you do vary the motive quite often, so you are able to keep things interesting that way!

Harmony: Definitely more on the complex side. Complex in that you wrote a dissonant fugue. But the harmonies mesh well together, especially after listening to this multiple times.

Form and creativity: Clear form, and highly original work.

Score presentation: Beautiful score, clear notation layout.

Playability: This probably would be quite technical to perform, but seems quite playable to me.

Execution of challenge and taste: I realize this is highly subjective, but this piece just doesn't remind me of Halloween, despite the dissonance. But I still enjoyed the piece very much, especially since I am a big fan of fugues.

Hey there Wieland

Cool music, it definitely fits the theme of the competition! You're a very solid composer, as your music seems deeply rooted in a heavy contrapuntal style. That style usually isn't for me personally, but I had no problem staying engaged throughout your whole piece. 

I'm not offering too much in terms of critique for these halloween pieces, moreso just admiration and appreciation. Thanks for sharing this, and I hope it was fun and worthwhile learning how to orchestrate one of your own works. 🙂 

Cast your votes in the polls too!