"From Nothing, to Something" Summer 2026 Composition Competition

The members have voted in the poll and decided upon a theme for the next competition - "From Nothing, to Something"! This competition has no monetary awards - only kudos and badges. We are inviting the members/competitors to review and to participate in the creation of the badge awards that will be dispersed at the end of the competition! So if you have any ideas for particular badges that would accord with the kind of music that will be submitted for this competition and the theme of this competition, let us know in the List of Manually-Awardable Badges thread and we will take your ideas into consideration! Please reply to this thread to declare your intent to participate in this competition!

The winners will be determined by popular voting polls!

• The duration of each piece should once again be between 3 - 7 minutes.

• Reviewing the entries will once again be spearheaded by the members/competitors at large. You are free to use the Official Competition Reviewing Template or you can review the entries in any way you see fit or create a template of your own making! Thank you for whatever time and effort you are able or willing to give towards reviewing the competition entries!

• There will be tiered "Ardent Reviewer" badges given out for this event:

  • Featherweight Reviewer - for reviewing 33% of the entries

  • Welterweight Reviewer - for reviewing 66% of the entries

  • Heavyweight Reviewer - for reviewing 100% of the entries

• We are instituting a policy of not allowing any AI generated works in the competition. Because of this you will be required to detail how you created your piece and submit a PDF score or midi file for the perusal of the staff and members at large.

• The musical entries to the competition are final once submitted. This is for the sake of consistency of reviewing (so that each reviewer reviews the same piece of music without any changes).

• Instrumentation: As per the poll, the competitors will be tasked with writing a piece for a mixed trio/quartet/quintet of individual instruments/players/singers.

• Deadline: As per the poll, this competition will take 2 months, so the deadline to participate will be Thursday, September 24th, 2026.

@MK_Piano's theme for the competition can be found below:

What greater challenge of a composer than to take nothing and turn it into something! Your goal is to take the text from Paul Verlaine’s summer poem “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été,” (So, on a bright summer day it shall be) and turn it into a piece! This poem is short, but filled with evoking images of what summer can feel like. Attached is the poem in English:

So, on a bright summer day it shall be:
The great sun, my partner in joy,
Shall make, amid the satin and the silk,
Your dear beauty lovelier still;

The sky, all blue, like a tall canopy,
Shall quiver sumptuously in the long folds
Above our two happy brows, grown pale
With pleasure and expectancy;

And when evening comes, the breeze shall be soft
And play caressingly about your veils,
And the peaceful stars looking down
Shall smile benevolently on man and wife.

The poem in French and English

Entrants to the competition thus far:

Here is the submissions thread for the competition where participants are encouraged to post links to their composition (rather than posting their piece directly into the pre-existing topic - make your own dedicated topic so the members at large can review your music there):