Moreshka (a folk dance of a fantasy country)

“Moreshka” is one of the musical illustrations to Max Dalin’s novel “The Bonfire and the Salamander”.
It is a folk dance of the Coastland, one of the countries in the novel’s fantasy world.
Imagine a southern port city at the beginning of the 20th century: its people, its life, and of course its music. What you will hear here is the music of the city’s lower classes, the kind that was played in the streets, in taverns, and on town squares. A dance of fishermen and sailors. In terms of melodic character, I deliberately tried to create something that sounds both familiar and national, yet at the same time neutral. Of course, you will hear echoes of Russian, Moldavian, Jewish, and Romanian melos. However, I avoided any overly obvious stylization.
Imagine some folk festival where ordinary people are celebrating. And tell me, did it work? =)

hello, I’ll be saying a lot about your piece because I’m really enjoy it, and I listened to the entirety of it i’ll probably deep dive on this one because I found a lot of orchestration things that are interesting which I do wanna point out, but let’s talk about the general effect idea

Ideas of general effect: as an audience member and also as a person looking at the score, I enjoyed this stylistic idea, listening to it blindly without program notes. This definitely does scream Russian. but after that, I could definitely hear the Jewish/Romanian inflections. I definitely enjoy a fun fast paced folk dance. The harmony was definitely colorful. I must say in the orchestration was interesting as well. Also, there was a great touch with tempo changes as well. You decided to go the abrupt option which makes sense where they seamlessly don’t change rather than a seamless change. Maybe you could’ve experiment with more gradual tempo changes but it’s more of a stylistic choice if you leave them out, which I definitely respect that. Tambourine would go so hard with this. I compose my pieces with a ton of percussion so you could add more percussion if you want, but I get if some composers don’t like doing so. with the general idea with the effect of the sounding its own thing is the effect on that fails as it sounds way too familiar and it feels more of an adaptation on existing earth culture rather than a culture elsewhere.

about orchestration I will look at the score, but here is some first impressions

I love that thing that you did with the clarinets in thirds that was really creative and it was a quick change of character, which I definitely appreciated. And you definitely passed the idea around as well.

I have some questions as well while else re-listening to it, this is more of a stylistic approach on your behalf, but I would definitely add trombone in with that first brass entrance if we’re adding tuba, but then your argument could possibly be that the tuba provides the base and is not as harsh as trombone’s,

with page 4, when the melody is passed to the Lows the patterns I would usually see is woodwinds doubling with each other with the additional add-on with strings. The first time with strings you add low brass rather than low Reeds what I was thinking by intuition

Page 9 features Viola and clarinets a nice velvety, warm pairing. with page 10 features the thing I was talking about with the clarinet in thirds.

A trumpet feature follows after that I would say it’s unusual for a folk color, but it serves well as a pallet cleanser

Page 14 contains a call and response sort of idea with the brass note that bass doubles tuba; in the concert band setting this is a strong orchestration technique, given reinforcement in a orchestra given that there’s more string basses the strength and reinforcement is more effective

later on the idea was given to the entire orchestra, allowing more color and blending

you should be awarded amazing orchestration on this

Anyways, this was very fun to look at, and this was full of amazing orchestration

5 hours ago, Fruit hunter said:

hello, I’ll be saying a lot about your piece because I’m really enjoy it, and I listened to the entirety of it i’ll probably deep dive on this one because I found a lot of orchestration things that are interesting which I do wanna point out, but let’s talk about the general effect idea

Ideas of general effect: as an audience member and also as a person looking at the score, I enjoyed this stylistic idea, listening to it blindly without program notes. This definitely does scream Russian. but after that, I could definitely hear the Jewish/Romanian inflections. I definitely enjoy a fun fast paced folk dance. The harmony was definitely colorful. I must say in the orchestration was interesting as well. Also, there was a great touch with tempo changes as well. You decided to go the abrupt option which makes sense where they seamlessly don’t change rather than a seamless change. Maybe you could’ve experiment with more gradual tempo changes but it’s more of a stylistic choice if you leave them out, which I definitely respect that. Tambourine would go so hard with this. I compose my pieces with a ton of percussion so you could add more percussion if you want, but I get if some composers don’t like doing so. with the general idea with the effect of the sounding its own thing is the effect on that fails as it sounds way too familiar and it feels more of an adaptation on existing earth culture rather than a culture elsewhere.

about orchestration I will look at the score, but here is some first impressions

I love that thing that you did with the clarinets in thirds that was really creative and it was a quick change of character, which I definitely appreciated. And you definitely passed the idea around as well.

I have some questions as well while else re-listening to it, this is more of a stylistic approach on your behalf, but I would definitely add trombone in with that first brass entrance if we’re adding tuba, but then your argument could possibly be that the tuba provides the base and is not as harsh as trombone’s,

with page 4, when the melody is passed to the Lows the patterns I would usually see is woodwinds doubling with each other with the additional add-on with strings. The first time with strings you add low brass rather than low Reeds what I was thinking by intuition

Page 9 features Viola and clarinets a nice velvety, warm pairing. with page 10 features the thing I was talking about with the clarinet in thirds.

A trumpet feature follows after that I would say it’s unusual for a folk color, but it serves well as a pallet cleanser

Page 14 contains a call and response sort of idea with the brass note that bass doubles tuba; in the concert band setting this is a strong orchestration technique, given reinforcement in a orchestra given that there’s more string basses the strength and reinforcement is more effective

later on the idea was given to the entire orchestra, allowing more color and blending

you should be awarded amazing orchestration on this

Anyways, this was very fun to look at, and this was full of amazing orchestration

Hello!
Thank you so much for such a detailed review and for your positive feedback.
As for whether the music comes across as something of its own or as an adaptation of the music of our world, perhaps I didn’t phrase my idea very well in the opening post. I actually wanted the music to resemble the music we know. By “its own” I meant not something invented, but something heard since childhood and well settled in memory. I wanted it to feel familiar, but not to be merely what one’s memory supplies.
The novel itself, which this piece was written to illustrate, is a fantasy work set in a world strongly resembling Europe before and during the First World War. Naturally, there are references to the Russian Empire as well. For example, the author even added poems that directly recreate the style of the so-called Silver Age of Russian poetry. And I wanted to do the same thing in the music.
However, I’m only describing my intention :) It’s by no means certain that I succeeded. A composer often can’t tell the difference between what he planned to create and what he actually ended up with :)
Special thanks for the praise of the orchestration :) It’s very pleasant to hear. Thank you :)