Tempest (Sonata in A Minor)

Hi everybody. With school I have taken a long leave of absence, but I'm off now, not that I was a huge presence before, but I have been around before. This is the first piece I have ever arranged for orchestra, and I think I cheated and used shortcuts as much as possible. That being said, let's analyze it properly (according to the rules, at least)

1. Techniques used

I really don't know what this is refering to. Um, there are moments of good eighteenth century voice-leading, but I think most of it was just kind of...composed free style?

2. How long it took to compose the piece

This is hard to say just because there's been so much time in between things, and memory fades. I wrote the original melody (which is on this site somewhere) I think last summer or so, and I made a finished form (arranged for keyboard) by January, but that didn't go over too well. As I finished my AP Music theory class this year, I looked at this piece again, re-harmonized much of the original melody, tweaked the last section, and then I pulled an all-nighter arranging it from keyboard to orchestra the night before I had to have something in class.

3. Structure of your piece

Again, I'm not entirely sure what this is getting at, the form is more or less ABA', but I didn't follow any official form. You could say that there is an introduction followed by the exposition of the theme, a quasi-developmental passage for the strings, followed by a recapitulation of the theme. So you could say it's a sonata. And since Sonata sounds better than tone poem, maybe I should call it that? I dunno, I'm very new to this, what do you guys think? Is she a sonata?

4. Obstacles when composing

I wrote the whole melody in a minor key prior to any knowledge of the harmonic or melodic minor scales. When I revisited and re-worked it, I tried to conserve the melody as much as possible, and have done so to a greater extent than I thought would be possible, while still utilizing much more standard procedure V chords and whatever else comes from those scales.

Besides this product of my own ignorance and a little laziness, most of the obstacles came in arranging. I just sort of copied and pasted harmony parts which follow the bass line rhythm into the middle voices of other instrument groups. The Bassoon, Tuba, and Double Bass all pretty much play the exact same thing, as do the Clarinets, Trombones, and Celli. Again, my inexperience in arranging is quite apparent, I think, and any tips as to where to go from here would be appreciated.

Finally I want to apologize that the sound fonts are a mix match of samples, not all of which work together particularly well. I'm disappointed that I couldn't find a realistic clarinet sample that blended very well (this one sticks out) and the viola part is mostly lost due to both the nature of the attack on its sound font as well as the swell of sound from the chords of the other string instruments.

5. Summary of overall piece

This piece is, at times, foreboding, mournful, and certainly angry. I know it's not all that great of an arrangement, nor of an mp3, but I feel like I have truly achieved something, although it's probably like a small child climbing onto the first step and feeling pretty good about himself.

MP3:

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Sorry, no pdf score.

Both the MIDI and the Sibelius file are at about 2/3 tempo, it should be about 96 bpm, and they're at 60, I believe.

tempest.mid

tempest.sib

Sounds good but at the end it kind of got bundled but you should make the last chords a little faster

Ok, I couldn't read the small scorch file, so, no thorough feedback.

1) For the first measures, why not notate the horns in the bass clef?

2) Not a sonata. Sonatas are usually composed for piano, or for solo instrument (often with piano). But, I might be wrong.

3) I expected a great crescendo at m. 30. It never came. What a disappointment!

4) The ending was...insulting to the rest of the piece.

5) Despite the above, I love the work you did here, your ideas are very good, your orchestration (sounds like it) works.

Cheers!

Ok, I couldn't read the small scorch file, so, no thorough feedback.

1) For the first measures, why not notate the horns in the bass clef?

2) Not a sonata. Sonatas are usually composed for piano, or for solo instrument (often with piano). But, I might be wrong.

1) why bother? for only 2 ledger lines? unless the part was consistantly in the 3-4 ledger line area and lower, there's no real reason to use bass clef for the horn. 3rd and 4th horns are used to reading a few ledger lines anyways.

2) Nope, you're not wrong. Sonata could be considered a "form", but in this particular case that doesn't apply. You're right that generally a sonata is a piece for either one or two instruments (leaving aside baroque considerations of the "sonata a 3" with continuo). I have never seen the term applied to a work for orchestra.

Since this is neo-baroque in neither idiom nor size, there's no reason to apply the "original" meaning of the term "sonata".

Let me guess . . . is this an AS Neoclassical piece? If it is, then you had better add some dynamics and performance instructions. Did you use the 'Arrange' tool to turn this into orchestral writing?

Having said that, I did quite like it. The main theme was memorable, and quite exciting.

Thank you for your responses.

OK, so it's not a sonata, I really wasn't sure, and I don't especially care. If I want to call something a sonata in the future, I'll begin with that in mind.

I wanted to have the horns an octave higher for most of it, but I put it into Sibelius and it said that those were difficult notes for the instrument, so I moved them down an octave. Although, Sibelius also claims that the trumpets would strain hitting an A, which is ridiculous, if a trumpet player can't play an A, he doesn't have a job. Isn't it a little unusual for a Horn part to be written in the bass clef? I mean, I've seen it for a few bars in a piece or two, but I thought it was kind of odd.

And I totally blanked out on dynamic phrasing :P . That would add a much needed dimension to this sucker.

I haven't a clue as to what AS Neoclassical is, and no, I did not use the Arrange tool. I'm quite new to Sibelius and I would be afraid to use it. This arrangement was done all on my own (hence my anxiety about it).

Thanks again for the responses.

no, horn parts when needed, are frequently written in bass clef. generally it's the 2nd and 4th horns that get the bass clef music (the "low" horns). however, as I stated earlier, I wouldn't shy away from a few ledger lines in treble clef... they're used to reading them.

also

think of the horn as an alto instrument.

examine some horn parts from well-known orchestral pieces, and you'll get a better idea of where the horn generally sounds best.

generally, a rule of thumb would be that the horn is best kept within an octave of middle C (concert) in either direction with the extreme notes at either end appearing less frequently, and the largest share of the material much nearer to middle C (concert).

and buy a book on instrumentation/orchestration.. don't rely on some stupid plug-in to tell you what's playable and what isn't.

Sorry - it's just than in England, the most popular exam board for teenage musicians is Edexcel, and its 'composition' section requres the pupil to write a piece of at least 3 minutes in length, in one of the areas of study (one of which is neoclassicism, the most popular topic) and then to answer questions in a little schpiel thing in almost exactly the same way that you did - and since the exams are now, everyone in the country who's between the ages of 15-17 and studying music at school will be producing a composition, many in a similar format to yours (although the vast majority won't be nearly as good!)

I just thought I would ask, in case I was right. I was wrong, so the risk of asking didn't really pay off. Oh well!