A Ballade for the Dead | Rondo for Orchestra

Hey everyone! I am decided to go ahead and publish my finished works on the forum. I may re-upload some existing works to match this shift, however, let this score mark the second part of this series! 

No.2 - Ballade for the Dead

A Ballade for the Dead was composed for a larger chamber orchestra in 2025 during their call for scores, and unfortunately, did not pass on to the final round of judging. A little defeated, I thought about what to do with the score, and thankfully found inspiration to use it as the first movement of a 3-part suite titled describing the afterlife. It is not yet finished as I am working on the subsequent movements, but am eager to share the start of the project. The pronunciation for the work is meant to be pronounced as the other version "Ballad" instead of "Ballade". I just liked the E better for the spelling 😅. To add, I have found inspiration for a possible choir version depicting the battle between God, Satan and a lonely Priest. Many possibilities to be had!

Feel free to leave any comments about the work and I hope to see you all in the next one!

(P.S. In my opinion, this work is complete and as of this post, I have no plans to update the score)
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PROGRAM NOTE:
        A Ballade for the Dead is a several-minute long work for chamber orchestra detailing the concept of Death. The piece does not follow a specific storyline, instead, it paints a dramatic and abstract journey through the afterlife. Join the orchestra as they paint the agony, dread, and quiet beauty that might be experienced by a soul as they cross over; whether wandering through Purgatory, facing judgment, or simply drifting beyond, they follow this Ballade of Death.

no.7_A Ballade for the Dead.pdf

Edited March 17Mar 17 by MK_Piano

No.2 - Ballade for the Dead

1: Oh My God....... This Composition actually has a " MELODY "   I thought Melody's were Banned on this Forum.

This Melody is DISTINCT , as opposed to OBSCURE, its instantly Recognized when it presents itself.

So that is a Major Plus +++++

2: This Score has a ,  Beginning-Middle-End  that's also very Evident, as opposed to ........ " Where am i in this Composition ? "

3: Overall Feeling & Sound of this Performance is : Main-Stream-Commercial Movie-Score.

Hey @MK_Piano !

This is a nice macabre movement. I find that you have a tendency (2:59) to imitate Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata accompaniment - I think you also did this in your Halloween piece. I also recognize the melody that's playing there - I could swear that it's a quote from another Beethoven work - possibly Symphony No.6? I don't know if that was intentional. My overall impression of the piece is that there's definitely identifiable main themes in it - some of them aren't original, and there's also lots of repetition by changing the instrumentation/orchestration of the occurrence of the themes. But I did enjoy listening to this grotesque and dark piece about death! Thanks for sharing!

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Hey @MK_Piano !

This is a nice macabre movement. I find that you have a tendency (2:59) to imitate Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata accompaniment - I think you also did this in your Halloween piece. I also recognize the melody that's playing there - I could swear that it's a quote from another Beethoven work - possibly Symphony No.6? I don't know if that was intentional. My overall impression of the piece is that there's definitely identifiable main themes in it - some of them aren't original, and there's also lots of repetition by changing the instrumentation/orchestration of the occurrence of the themes. But I did enjoy listening to this grotesque and dark piece about death! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the comments! I must admit, nothing was intentional 😅. If I recreated a theme, then it was purely by coincidence. The most obvious one to me is the Mendelssohn D-minor Trio main theme. I didn't mean to use the same opening intervals, as I originally started this work at 1:00am and was just feeling the half-asleep burst of creativity do it's thing lol. I personally used Khachaturian as my basis in the Development section.

It did only take me three days to finish and once I settled on the Rondo form, I admit I just took the easy way of CTRL+C.

This said, It did give me inspiration to do more with the whole theme, and I did sketch out a way to make this a three movement suite. "A Suite for the Dead" would be the WiP title. When it comes time to ship the finished product, I would want to reorchestrate a majority of this work. To be honesty, the more I listen to it, while as catchy as it can be, it gets stale outside of the harmonic changes. The more I grow as a composer, the more I have the feeling I can do more with this work too.

Thanks again for the comments and I would love to chat in more detail about it sometime.