The Voyage of a Lone Ship - Spring 2026 Composition Competition Submission

helloooo

"The Voyage of a Lone Ship" is a piece for mixed quintet (violin, cello, horn, timpani, and piano). it is based on a sketch from the website youraislopbores.me*. i've asked a random person to draw a landscape for me to base my composition on and what i got is this sketch of a lone ship sailing on the sea under a starry night. the piece contains many different aspects that i try to portray: the lone night voyage, the shimmering star, the creaking wooden ship, the wavy sea, the exciting morning conundrum, and the night fall once more.

*of note, youraislopbores.me is a website where real people can roleplay as an ai and answer/draw prompts from humans. people can also be the role of the humans and give the "ai(s)" (people who's roleplaying as ai(s)) many kinds of prompts. therefore, this artwork is not made by ai. a real anonymous person sketched my prompt and created the artwork below. this website is an act against ai art in general.

im going to be honest, composing this piece was a tough journey. i had to rewrote the early sections so many times and my motivation keeps dwindling down day by day to finish this, but ive pulled through!!! i'd say there are many things that i'm not entirely satisfied with the piece, but it's in a good enough condition for me to post. also mightve gone overboard with the duration, oh well lmao

enjoy the piece guysss

The Voyage of A Lone Ship.pdf

Edited Tuesday at 11:52 AM2 days by ferrum.wav

Entry: The voyage of the sunken ship.

Average Score:7.12

Review:

Execution: One of the requirements is write a piece with in 3-7 minutes. This was 9 minutes. The overall aura of this piece is mixed. At times, it gave off eerie mood then it didn't?

Score Presentation: The score was readable and there were no engraving errors.

Instrumentation: The imbalance between the strings and horns is problematic. You could not horn at all! Watch out for those stops in the string part. Make sure they are playable!

Creativity: Yes, this a creative piece.

The over structure and form of the piece is hard to determine. I am not sure if it is sonata, or scherzo, or something else...

In general, I would want to see him grow as writer and see more of his works. He has the potential! I love what he did here.

Average Score: 7.8

Review:

This is a very creative piece, starting with the painting (which I love) and the concept. I’m not sure the music in particular evokes that for me, but it’s so subjective...

It’s true that the piece goes beyond what was supposedly the challenge.

The combination of instruments is original. I think the French horn works well in this ensemble because it has such a powerful projection. Although with virtual instruments, it’s sometimes easy to alter how it would actually sound.

There’s a strange shift in style, but I like it. It reminds me of a contemporary opera written in a non-tonal language where, suddenly, everything sounds like jazz.

The score is very good, though is there a reason why the piano is printed in a larger font?

I also have doubts about those multiple stops, even with techniques like con legno.

8 hours ago, Kvothe said:

Entry: The voyage of the sunken ship.

I didn't know the ship sank

10 hours ago, Kvothe said:

In general, I would want to see him grow as writer and see more of his works. He has the potential! I love what he did here.

It’s a bit weird you are reviewing @ferrum.wav ’s work but mentioned him as a he rather than a you 🤪

Disqualified due to being too long, but otherwise Average is 9.4

Congratulations! You got the highest score from me. I scored everyone else quite low. My only issue was the horn was sometimes a little high, and although each instrument is generally well written for, the ensemble would be a little imbalanced if performed live I think. But besides that, it was great. It's a shame it's too long! Thanks for sharing, it was a very enjoyable listen!

Melodies Themes Motives:

The piece is full of motifs that reflect the various impressions experienced during voyage of the ship. Most of them not in the manner of a melody but rather to create the respective impression: the waves, the storm, and the loneliness of a quiet night. However, there are also some melodic lines that turn the whole thing into “music” and not not only an agglomeration of imitated “sounds.” Well done!

Harmony Chords Textures:

The harmonic style is—though surprising at first—very varied: dramatic, atonal passages shift directly to more tonal, calm ones and are then interspersed with jazzy sections—which I really liked. One can literally imagine the different situations of the ship’s voyage: storm and heavy waves – and then again the calm, open sea or a lonely starry night.

Form Development Structure Time:

The composition does not follow any specific traditional form, which is perfectly acceptable for a piece intended to depict certain images, tell a story, or even serve as film music. Unfortunately, the playing time of more than 9 minutes exceeds the limits requested by the contest’s prerequisites.

Originality Creativity:

There is a lot of creativity! First, your attempt to get the inspiration from a prompt given random people with the task to draw the picture. How many attempts did you need? Or did you go with the first one? Since the result was unpredictable, you had to take up a scenario you perhaps did not think on and translate it to the music!

And there is also lot creativity in the music itself. The instrumentation and the contrast between the more dramatic and the playful, jazz-like sections!

Score Presentation:

The score, while being dense due to the many “virtuoso” passages that need to be engraved, is clear and readable. Perhaps you have decided for the smaller font on the other instruments than the piano to achieve that more staves would fit on a single page.

Instrumentation Orchestration Playability:

The instrumentation is very interesting: With the piano as the foundation and providing the more rhythmic and percussive base, the strings consisting of a cello and violin—thus offering a large ambitus—and the horn and timpani serving as festive and signaling elements, you have a variety of sounds at your disposal to create a piece with different colors. As for playability, I think it would be at least “challenging” and would require a certain degree of virtuosity if performed by human musicians.

Execution of Given Challenge:

You have clearly mastered the challenge of the contest with excellence! But – and that hurts me to say – not met the rules of the competition. As you stated yourself that you „might’ve gone overboard with the duration“, you are aware of that rule violation. And I can truly understand that, when being in a „flow“ composing, it is sometimes hard to come to the end if there are a number of ideas which have to been expressed. Concerning the huge amount of effort you must have spent to achieve that final result, you’re tempting me to break the rules as well by giving you a score that takes all (other) criteria into account and doesn’t skip your piece due to disqualification.

Taste:

Even if that genre (let me call it „soundtrack“ or „movie score“) is not my favorite one, I really like it due to it creative ideas and colorfulness.

Average Score: 9.0

Avg: 9.1

The intro is awesome! I love how you start this out, as chaotic, but structured chaos. I observed some instances of the whole tone scale towards the beginning, which I feel adds to the mystery of the voyage. It's clear from the music that you intended this to be a chaotic voyage, with the instances of adventure and reprieve. Fun motive towards the first third / or middle section of the piece. Very swing-like here, and I definitely get a sense of exploration and adventure around this section. Then you change it up the last 3rd (beautiful usage of a rest, creating anticipation, or a scene change), followed up with instances of mystery, calm and some chaos. For some reason I get a bit of a Rachmaninoff vibe here. Very jazzy ending, and yes as I listen to the ending right now, I definitely hear a tiny bit of Rach influence...this is pretty awesome!

There was a lot of musical content here, definitely one of the more complex pieces in this competition. Either way, complex or not, this is an extremely creative piece. Your intro was killer, your middle section introduced the fun swing-like motive, the last third was enjoyable and quite melodramatic. Awesome use of the whole tone scale; you didn't overdo it, but used it just enough to add some fun mystery to this voyage. Well done!

alrightttttt time to respond to some of the comments @Kvothe @Wieland Handke @ComposaBoi @chopin @Luis Hernández

On 6/2/2026 at 7:51 PM, Kvothe said:

One of the requirements is write a piece with in 3-7 minutes. This was 9 minutes.

7 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

But – and that hurts me to say – not met the rules of the competition. As you stated yourself that you „might’ve gone overboard with the duration“, you are aware of that rule violation.

11 hours ago, ComposaBoi said:

Disqualified due to being too long

On 6/2/2026 at 11:54 PM, Luis Hernández said:

It’s true that the piece goes beyond what was supposedly the challenge.

i am very aware of the rule violation and i honestly dont care to be honest lol. ive already made peace with it. also, ive gone with the mindset of atleast i've finished a piece and not leave it unfinished like my other pieces. working on this piece was hard enough that im really proud to have enough determination to actually complete it.

On 6/2/2026 at 11:54 PM, Luis Hernández said:

The combination of instruments is original. I think the French horn works well in this ensemble because it has such a powerful projection. Although with virtual instruments, it’s sometimes easy to alter how it would actually sound.

this is what i thought and heard as well during my researching process. i was listening to dohnanyi's sextet, which included horn, and horn could definitely project powerfully. furthermore, when executing loud dynamics, the virtual instrument that i've used aren't very capable to project strongly.

11 hours ago, ComposaBoi said:

My only issue was the horn was sometimes a little high

i do acknowledge that. my method was to give the horn rests before and after the high register sections and make sure to only do loud dynamics. but mayyybe i might still have gone overboard with it lmao

On 6/2/2026 at 7:51 PM, Kvothe said:

The imbalance between the strings and horns is problematic. You could not horn at all!

11 hours ago, ComposaBoi said:

the ensemble would be a little imbalanced if performed live

i'd love to hear more specifics about this tbh

On 6/2/2026 at 11:54 PM, Luis Hernández said:

is there a reason why the piano is printed in a larger font?

7 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

Perhaps you have decided for the smaller font on the other instruments than the piano to achieve that more staves would fit on a single page.

ive researched this many times and my conclusion is that it is the standard? maybe ive looked at the wrong discussions but the majority said that for chamber music, the staves besides the piano may be smaller to conserve space, which it did. but they also said that this applies to formatting for the piano part. soo i guess you could say that my score is the piano part. idk

7 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

The piece is full of motifs that reflect the various impressions experienced during voyage of the ship. Most of them not in the manner of a melody but rather to create the respective impression: the waves, the storm, and the loneliness of a quiet night.

7 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

One can literally imagine the different situations of the ship’s voyage: storm and heavy waves – and then again the calm, open sea or a lonely starry night.

glad you hear those things that ive tried to portray! it was definitely the vision that i was trying to achieve and im satisfied you got those impressions.

3 hours ago, chopin said:

I observed some instances of the whole tone scale towards the beginning, which I feel adds to the mystery of the voyage

yesssss you noticed the whole tone scale scattered throughout! it was definitely cus of just, "water," but yes it definitely added a tone of mystery too.

7 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

First, your attempt to get the inspiration from a prompt given random people with the task to draw the picture. How many attempts did you need? Or did you go with the first one? Since the result was unpredictable, you had to take up a scenario you perhaps did not think on and translate it to the music!

yes! there were fair few selections of artworks that i had to choose from, here are the two of them

there shouldve been two or three drawings but i didnt download it in time before it got wiped

On 6/2/2026 at 11:54 PM, Luis Hernández said:

There’s a strange shift in style, but I like it. It reminds me of a contemporary opera written in a non-tonal language where, suddenly, everything sounds like jazz.

7 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

and are then interspersed with jazzy sections—which I really liked.

4 hours ago, chopin said:

Fun motive towards the first third / or middle section of the piece. Very swing-like here

with the middle section, i had wanted a clear contrast between the dreary beginning and ending. so i sketched up a rhythmically active theme.

as it evolved (with instrumentation and other embellishments), it turned into somewhat of a "pop-y" sound - catchy, syncopated and all - and i liked how it sounded. it definitely does sound like an adventure!

8 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

The composition does not follow any specific traditional form

On 6/2/2026 at 7:51 PM, Kvothe said:

The over structure and form of the piece is hard to determine

form:

b1-b38 = intro (contains fragments of Theme 1 (T1), specifically the first three 4 notes),

5 hours ago, chopin said:

The intro is awesome! I love how you start this out, as chaotic, but structured chaos.

i imagined this to be like the entrance appearance of the ship, the sound of a creaking old wooden ship

b39-b84 = full intro and repetition of T1 (the dreary and mysterious theme)

b85-b101 = a whole tone scale "storm," Theme 1 is pitted against Theme 2 motif

b103-b155 = full intro and 2 repetitions of T2 (the bright and catchy theme)

b156-b193 = a fugue section of T2 and T1 meant as a transition

b194-b232 = T1, cut and altered

b233-256 = coda, contains the final climax. the "misterioso" part meant to be a call back to the intro (b249 right hand piano arpeggio figure, b250 piano left hand the "atonal" figure) with T2 motif on the horn.

4 hours ago, chopin said:

I definitely hear a tiny bit of Rach influence

definitely due to the massive piano chord arpeggios and the syncopated triplets lmao

8 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

As for playability, I think it would be at least “challenging” and would require a certain degree of virtuosity if performed by human musicians.

On 6/2/2026 at 7:51 PM, Kvothe said:

Watch out for those stops in the string part. Make sure they are playable!

On 6/2/2026 at 11:54 PM, Luis Hernández said:

I also have doubts about those multiple stops, even with techniques like con legno.

i think one of my principle of writing for instruments is to squeeze and extract as much as possible out of them. i could definitely see some issues with this but in my mind, i always think of playability, even in the brink of it lol. with the stops, most of them are 6ths, 8ths, open strings, the triple stops are in 6ths with the exception of including open strings, the quadruple stops always have open strings to them, and im aware of the difficulty of executing these in faster speed, the challenging registers (high for violin, low for cello), and the possible positions with each strings. the col legno are performed at open strings as well.

12 hours ago, ComposaBoi said:

Congratulations! You got the highest score from me. I scored everyone else quite low.

i am honored lol

On 6/2/2026 at 7:51 PM, Kvothe said:

The score was readable and there were no engraving errors.

On 6/2/2026 at 11:54 PM, Luis Hernández said:

The score is very good

8 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

The score, while being dense due to the many “virtuoso” passages that need to be engraved, is clear and readable.

i am GLAD and SATISFIED that everyone liked the presentation of the score. i worked soooo hard on it and it is definitely satisfying to see everyone like it

thank you so much for everyone that has commented so far! i will definitely try to comment the other pieces. i meant to start early with that (and i did, with 1 piece lmao) but i always struggle to put my thoughts into words as they are very scattered in my mind.

On 6/2/2026 at 7:51 PM, Kvothe said:

You could not horn at all!