April 11, 200718 yr Hi, I wrote this piece for a small project for my English class. We were supposed to create something unique to us and our interpretation of a poem about death and the afterlife called "Thanatopsis". I did this in about two and a half hour yesterday. It's kinda choppy right now; I hope to go back later and make some of the sections longer and develop the themes more, but I hardly ever go back to pieces. Please listen to the MP3 if at all possible. I wrote this in Sibelius, but I used sound library other than Kontakt that I really like, and the midi has many differences from the mp3. MP3: Thanatopsis Thanks for any critique! thanatopsis.mid
April 15, 200718 yr First of all, I like this piece! It has kind of an epic feel to it, especially with the addition of the vocal choirs. You could have held the last note a little longer though, and also developed the organ part more, which seemed a little random. I like the contrast of the solo violin with the big choir. This piece kind of reminded me of soundtrack music, because it was really epic, but not too melodic. Perhaps you were looking for this kind of sound, and that's ok for a short piece like this, but you should think more about memorable melodies if you want to engage the listener for longer. Also, as to how it relates to Thanatopsis, I might have written a quieter piece to make it seem more reflective, but I still got the feeling of death from this one. The regal nature of this piece sort of reminded me of the author's point in that poem that from the simplest peasant to the greatest king, we all ultimately suffer the same fate; it also reminded me of the author's mention of the majesty of nature (hey, maybe you can use that in your presentation:P ). Overall, I enjoyed this very much. P.S. For 2 and a half hours of work, this is very good.
April 19, 200718 yr Author Thanks for the reply! I agree with everything you said. I usually end up producing stuff like this--not very melodic. I'm trying to work on that, but I lose direction a lot. I also gotta agree with you it doesn't fit the poem very well. That wasn't exactly what I was shooting for, but I can see how I could have made it a little more relevant to the poem. I mostly wanted to convey death. One thing I thought about a lot--and something that especially inspired the epic moments--were the lines in the poem that talk about the Earth being man's great sepulcher and the mountains, valleys, planets, and stars decorating his tomb. One day I think I might like to write a more suiting choral work actually based on the poem. But I really dont know much about writing for voices--or for a lot of things for that matter. I'm still trying to learn a lot about music. Anyway, here's a second version where I added some more to the organ part and tried to make it a little more substantial. thanatopsis2
