Landscapes-Soundscape: Alishan (for Flute Quintet)

Dear all,

This is a short piece inspired by my trip last year with my girlfriend on a winter trip to Alishan at Taiwan, and we were visiting it in the afternoon.

The photo is taken at the entrance of the Alishan visitor's zone.

It is a place of high mountains with tall, spiritual trees, among which we travel with light railways and walked through the bridges. Being from a city with concretes, this jungle is particularly peaceful and you can always find the beauty of nature there.

I have always been eager to write a piece as a diary of my visits, and it is a completely good time (the competition) for me to write one. Hope you all like it!

HoYin

Alishan for Flute Quintet.pdf

Edited Wednesday at 04:45 PM2 days by HoYin Cheung
Changed from Soundcloud to Youtube due to technical issue

Entry: Alishan

Average Score: 9.6

Review:

Score Presentation: There were no engraving errors with the given score.

Instrumentation, Playability: Strings players need time to change between pizz and arco. The double stops in b 58 is not playable! The quadable stop is better mark pizz. The arco 16th notes could be played better as pizz?

Execution: This piece exceeding expectations of challenge.

Taste: I appreciate the composer understanding 20th century harmonic language within this composition. It is refreshing to hear modern classical music like this! I would hear piece like this!

Creativity, Originality: Alishan was highly creative and original.

Harmony and texture: The high sense of chromaticism is what makes this piece truly interesting.

Strcuture: This is a tough one to nail down. I think the best way to describe to it is:ABA (I think).

Motives: There are well crafted motives and themes through out the piece.

9 hours ago, Kvothe said:

Instrumentation, Playability: Strings players need time to change between pizz and arco. The double stops in b 58 is not playable! The quadable stop is better mark pizz. The arco 16th notes could be played better as pizz?

Thank you for your comment, @Kvothe.

In actual practice, a string player will still hold the bow and use the index finger (for violin/viola) to perform pizzicato. That way, they have enough time to switch back to arco. quickly without disrupting the performance, at least from my experience as a violinist.

The quadruple stops are also taken care of when I write this piece and should not bring too much of difficulty playing. Most of them are designed and indicated to be played as broken chords for better playability and for intentionally lighter textures. Moreover, open strings are used to make the chord more resonant for better projection.

The choice of pizz and arco. depends on the texture - Do I want a richer sound to accompany the main melody? I often consider the sound quality before the playability issue. Nevertheless, the 16th notes are projected better in arco.

For the double stops in m.58, they are playable using both A and D strings, with the last note played using the 4th finger to press both strings.

Average Score: 8.9

Review:

Melodies/Themes/Motives - The work is rich in motifs and themes, some of which are readily apparent, whilst others are deeply woven into the fabric of the piece.

Harmony/Chords/Textures - The texture is dense, but the individual parts are clearly defined.

Form/Development/Structure/Time - I sense a progressive structure, but it’s by no means boring. 

Originality/Creativity - It is a standard, effective combination.

Score Presentation - The score is correct and easy to read.

Instrumentation/Orchestration/Playability Reading the comments clears up any doubts about double or multiple stops.

Execution of Given Challenge - I think the author has succeeded in achieving his aim.

Average 7.5

Overall a well written piece. The main issue was the structure felt meandering and didn't have much direction to me. The string chords and arco/pizz changes are completely fine, so I gave you a ten there to counter-balance those who said it wasn't good instrument writing lol. Overall, good job!

Avg: 8.6

Once the flute came in, things started to really pick up. I love your theme, and it was quite easy to spot about a minute in. I had to listen to this a few times to understand the structure, but I realized that this piece has a few motives here. But this is not clear until after a full minute into the piece. The things I love about this piece is your harmony, key changing, the flute, the use of the pentatonic scale.

After reviewing eight of eleven contributions to the contest, there are now three ones remaining which challenge me the most. That are the ones of @InstrumentalistElle , @BipolarComposer and @HoYin Cheung . The reason for this is that they have so much in common, both in terms of their qualities and their style and mood. Since my comments would hardly differ, I have decided to copy and paste passages verbatim, which I will therefore highlight in blue, while my individual thoughts are written in the standard color as usual.

With your submission(s), you have presented compositions that best meet the expectations one might have given the “Landscapes-Soundscapes” challenge: Pieces that depict a landscape as a “still life”, utilizing every conceivable timbre of the instrumentation, blending, etc., to create true “program music”. When listening, one can easily imagine a scenery from the nature: clouds, trees, a quiet lake or sea, a sunset etc. All this has been executed very well.

On the other hand, the piece(s) are sometimes hard to memorize because there is few or even no thematic material in the sense of a recurring melody that is developed throughout the piece, giving it its own unique and memorable character. In fact, to be honest, as I listened to them in a loop —which is exactly what I did during a walk to familiarize myself with all the submissions—I sometimes thought the next section was coming up in the first piece, when indeed the next one had already begun. So I could imagine that this kind of music would work well as “ambient music”, for example, a CD someone might listen to at night if they have trouble falling asleep.

Melodies Themes Motives:

The motivic or thematic material of the piece(s) is used primarily to create a „soundscape“ depicting the certain scenes or images, such as the clouds, trees, mountains etc. Beside that, I would consider the motif presented by the violins in mm. 13 as the central, recurring „tonal“ motif which does not contribute to the „soundscape“ but provides a subtle melodic background.

Harmony Chords Textures:

The harmonic language could be described as „atonal“ due to its rich dissonances. However, with the above mentioned melodic theme, it is also interspersed with passages of „tonality“.

Form Development Structure Time:

The composition is not in a specific traditional form, the different sections or passages could be considered as „episodes“ or different „pictures“ of the entire imagery, which is fine for a piece intended to portrait a certain scenary from the nature.

Originality Creativity:

The creativity and originality clearly arises from the way how the different motifs create „sound snippets“ which finally draw the „soundscape“. Unfortunately, that creativity and originality does not produce enough memorable impressions to ultimately create a sense of „uniqueness“, so the piece is less recognizable than it should be.

Score Presentation:

The score is easy to read with no engraving issues. For aesthetic reasons, I do not like the last page with only 2 bars which could have been avoided by a better distribution of the bars around all pages.

Instrumentation Orchestration Playability:

Possible playability problems concerning the multiple stops have already been discussed.

Execution of Given Challenge:

You have clearly mastered the challenge of the contest with excellence, creating an inner imagery for the listener with your „soundscape“ that depicts the „landscape“ as described by the posted picture. And the term “soundscape” perfectly captures the nature of the piece.

Taste:

It's very nice for relaxing, though I prefer music that focuses more on thematic material and form (perhaps that's why I'm more of a fan of the Baroque or Classical periods than the Romantic one).

Average Score: 8.125