Composition in four hours without any breaks

Any feedback is largely apprciated. Thanks.

Hi @Bjarke!

The piece starts in a soft and dark place giving it lots of room to grow.  The trumpet melody at 0:43 is the first instance of a theme in the piece that could be developed.  At 1:03 you reiterate the theme in the choir with variation.  At 1:33 the thematic exposition is finished and you continue the piece with a sequence of ostinati over low brass accompaniment.  At 1:52 you introduce a trumpet fanfare that is then continued in the strings with brass ostinati underneath.  At 2:13 you introduce a rising choir and brass melody.  At 2:38 you've modulated into a nice string melody.  At 2:53 you start an intense passage for strings and brass.  There is some relief from this intensity at 3:17 with the staccato brass and string hits.  At 3:49 you have an intriguing string ostinato that in my opinion could have started softer to give it more room to crescendo towards the end of the piece.

Now to give my more overall impression of the whole piece:  I think the piece is exciting and full of energy but it suffers in terms of musical coherence and unity.  The trumpet theme at 0:43 is not particularly notable - in terms of melodic construction, it starts off strong and heroic but soon suffers from lack of inner melodic coherence.  What I mean is that melodies usually have some kind of self-similarity to give them a hook or a catchiness to the listener.  You do actually reiterate the hook of your trumpet melody in your string melody at 2:38 with variation which is a nice way to add some unity to the piece, but none of the other material in the piece seems to be related to the theme which is a shame and why I would say that overall, your piece lacks unity.  I would also say that it suffers from too much variety - it's a jumble of mostly unrelated ideas thrown together.  And the overall sense of the piece (besides the introduction) is to be hard, fast and loud without very many places where you let up the intensity which isn't very musical.  Like at 3:49 where I felt like you really could have drawn the listener in by bringing the dynamics of the whole orchestra way down so as to lead the piece with a big crescendo to the conclusion which would have been more effective imo.

Perhaps the reason why the piece resulted to be the way it is is because of what you chose to focus on when you were writing it?  It seems like "Composition in four hours without any breaks" was your goal rather than any kind of particular musical goal or inspiration.  Music is boring when it's approached in such a way as to look at it only as a way to force oneself to work on something without any breaks.  And why wouldn't you take any breaks?  Is there any particular reason?  That doesn't seem like a significant nor important goal in music.  For me, composition usually goes in cycles:  if I haven't composed something in a long time, I'll start out with something small to warm up, then I'll move on to progressively more substantial and involved musical projects.  Whether I take a break or not is not even something I pay attention to nor aspire to avoid.  Just saying:  you might want to rethink what's important to you in music or what your musical values are because it seems to me like you're not focusing on the right thing.  But everyone is different and you might not agree - if not, by all means continue writing the way you do and know how!  Thanks for sharing.