City Rail and Nightingale – Submission to the YCF 2026 Spring Competition

Hi, Wieland. Please see my evaluation of your submission below.

Melodies/Themes/Motives: The melodies were purely mimetic (i.e., attempting to portray the actual sounds in music rather than an emotional interpretation or representation) and therefore did not lend themselves to good melodic writing. Nevertheless, your use of themes and motives was very strong throughout, as meticulously noted in your score.

Harmony/Chords/Textures: On the one hand, you employed a couple of devices - tremolos and trills - to depict the train's acceleration and birdcalls, which was innovative. This texture, though, began to feel overused after a couple minutes into the piece. Because this piece was more onomatopoeia than programmatic music, the harmonies you used felt arbitrary. Moreover, the use of actual chords in this piece was more limited than what I thought at first listen; a great number of lines was doubled by another instrument, either in unison or at some octave above or below. All in all, I felt that the five instruments you used were "under tuned" for a piece of this caliber.

Form/Development/Structure/Time: There was good structure to this piece, though, again, because the piece was onomatopoeic, it didn't truly develop as much as it simply progressed from theme to theme. The break in tempo roughly midway through was appreciated, but the piece ironically lacked any sense of motion (to me, at least); the glue holding this together were the descriptive texts in the score that very unsubtly described what each motif was meant to portray. Without the score, the piece becomes a soundscape of seemingly disjointed musical themes abruptly changing from one to the next. However... from an objective standpoint, that you are able to conceive of these things in your mind and then organize them into musical sections is quite extraordinary.

Originality/Creativity: I've not heard anything similar to this, and even if I don't agree with your choice of chords and harmonies, this is a voice that is your own, and for that, you get the highest marks.

Score Presentation: Meticulous and thorough. Very close to professional quality, though a little crowded and over-articulated at various places for my taste.

Instrumentation/Orchestration/Playability: In my opinion, this is the piece's weakest aspect, though I do not wish to be harsh here. I strongly question the decision to use two pianos, when for the vast majority of the piece, they either A) do not play simultaneously, or B) when playing simultaneously, they do not use all four hands. Furthermore, the string parts frequently double either each other or one of the piano parts. Taken altogether, this suggests that the piece could be more succinctly written for a smaller ensemble, such as a piano trio (violin, cello, and piano). The 13/16 time signature present for most of the piece is already difficult to count out and, when coupled with the onomatopoeic nature of the themes, makes me wonder if perhaps an ametric approach would be more appropriate. Lastly, but maybe most importantly, the string parts do not add much to the piece, which is carried entirely by the movement in one (or both, at times) of the piano parts. It might have helped to give the strings some passages without the piano also playing.

Execution of Given Challenge: Again, I have to award high marks here simply because of how well you put this together. There's no question as to what your music depicts!

Taste: I lean strongly into the impressionist camp and, I suppose by definition, do not take much interest in mimetic music. I would normally give music like this a much lower score, but your command of tone and texture makes this considerably more enjoyable. Nice work!

Thanks for submitting, and happy composing!

Jordan

Hello @Tónskáld . Thank you very much for your review, which I consider to be the most thorough, honest, and balanced of them all.

I think you’ve literally addressed everything there is to say about my work, pinpointing its weaknesses while also highlighting some of its strengths, and in your final assessment, you’ve acknowledged the ideas and effort I put into it. I really appreciate that, and it helps me a lot to evaluate where I stand with my work—especially with this particular piece.

4 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

Melodies/Themes/Motives: The melodies were purely mimetic (i.e., attempting to portray the actual sounds in music rather than an emotional interpretation or representation) and therefore did not lend themselves to good melodic writing. Nevertheless, your use of themes and motives was very strong throughout, as meticulously noted in your score.

Harmony/Chords/Textures: On the one hand, you employed a couple of devices - tremolos and trills - to depict the train's acceleration and birdcalls, which was innovative. This texture, though, began to feel overused after a couple minutes into the piece. Because this piece was more onomatopoeia than programmatic music, the harmonies you used felt arbitrary. Moreover, the use of actual chords in this piece was more limited than what I thought at first listen; a great number of lines was doubled by another instrument, either in unison or at some octave above or below. All in all, I felt that the five instruments you used were "under tuned" for a piece of this caliber.

Usually, when composing, I focus primarily on thematic development, since my compositional genre—writing preludes and fugues, that is, the application of contrapuntal techniques—inherently requires this. But for this special competition, I took the opposite approach as otherwise, focusing first on the story and the “soundscapes” to be depicted, with the result that the thematic and harmonic development is indeed somewhat “thin” and “simple.” And interestingly, I was the only participant who interpreted (or misunderstood?) the challenge in this way—translating sounds or noises from nature or civilization into music—and thank you, now I know the technical term for this approach: “onomatopoeia.” 😀

4 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

Instrumentation/Orchestration/Playability: In my opinion, this is the piece's weakest aspect, though I do not wish to be harsh here. I strongly question the decision to use two pianos, when for the vast majority of the piece, they either A) do not play simultaneously, or B) when playing simultaneously, they do not use all four hands. Furthermore, the string parts frequently double either each other or one of the piano parts. Taken altogether, this suggests that the piece could be more succinctly written for a smaller ensemble, such as a piano trio (violin, cello, and piano). The 13/16 time signature present for most of the piece is already difficult to count out and, when coupled with the onomatopoeic nature of the themes, makes me wonder if perhaps an ametric approach would be more appropriate. Lastly, but maybe most importantly, the string parts do not add much to the piece, which is carried entirely by the movement in one (or both, at times) of the piano parts. It might have helped to give the strings some passages without the piano also playing.

Yes, that’s right. Even though this is a new composition for the competition, I just started to compose the piece for piano solo (since it is easier to it sketch out first, and on the other hand I wanted to include it in my collection of preludes and fugues) and in a second step „enriched“ the piece with the further instrumentation by the strings. Perhaps, if having some more time before the submission deadline, I had elaborated the string parts a bit more to avoid the unisono with the piano, at least there is a theme or motif in the “Nightingale” B section, played by the strings (measures 35–37 by the cello and measures 44–47 by the violin), that does not appear in the initial version for solo piano.

Why two pianos while not often playing simultaneously? I’m a bit scared about the playability of such long passages with (fast) tremolos by a single player. Thus the main objective for the two pianos was to give the players/hands enough rests between the tremolos. On the other hand, the two pianos produce a bit more color in the main texture which is, in fact, completely performed by the piano(s).

5 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

Score Presentation: Meticulous and thorough. Very close to professional quality, though a little crowded and over-articulated at various places for my taste.

Thanks, but maybe I went a little overboard; I just wanted to spell out the exact execution of the tremolos, glissandos, and trills.

Interesting, how different the subjective impressions are:

16 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

...  The Nightingale was perhaps the more successful of the two, giving me a more obvious musical association.  ...

On 5/31/2026 at 3:47 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

... I like the descriptive effect you used for both the train part and the nightingale part. I enjoy the train part more than the nightingale part, but only due to the rendition, because the should-be soft trills and glissandos representing the nightingales sound too hard to me haha. ...

That's a good advice. I'll try it out to soften the trills and glissandos of the "nightingales" when I'm going on to finally polish the solo piano version of the piece.

16 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

... I think if you wanted to depict the acceleration of the train, a more successful approach might have been to include an actual literal accelerando in your piece much like the Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop does (upon repeated listenings I did notice that you do in fact include a slight accelerando in your piece).  I really enjoyed the sounds of the train as well!  My favorite part was perhaps the passing of the railroad crossing in which you included an actual written out doppler effect!  Very clever!  I must say that my enjoyment of this piece grew the most from repeated listening in this competition.  Thanks for your participation and I hope you win the “Nature and Civilization” award that I made specifically for this piece!

Thank you very much! And yes, there is an accelerando/decelerando in tempo, but very subtle (from 8=81 up to 8=96). While I took all noises around me „verbatim“, creating a piece by „onomatopoeia“, I wanted to have the speed change of the train expressed by the rhythmic pattern of the „theme“, where the 13/16 time signature is treated as a compound meter of 3 + 4 + 6, which suggests the idea of acceleration (of the train), and, when reversed to 6 + 4 + 3, that of deceleration (as the train enters the station).