Obscene Obsession for Full Symphonic Orchestra

Maestro!!

i am trying to read your score and it is very complex , it is very hard to understand your music , but my mind and my body totally accept your sound from this music , it is very magical experience in my life

thank u for your sharing

dark-princess

Wow, I really like this piece! :cool: It sometimes has reminescences of minimal music, sometimes of impressionist work, but it really has a new quality of its own. I like the "hypnotic" parts and how you manage to bring new ideas into them. Many surprises (but surely no effects on effects sake).

Thank you for sharing,

Andreas

Guys!

Thank you so much for liking it and posting (Andreas: your first post, dark angel/princess/something 2 posts in this thread and a PM, David even if not caring for more 'contemporary' stuff you enjoyed it)

I'm honestly 'touched' by the response! :)

Contrary to many posts I have seen on this thread, I think that this is a beautiful piece of music. Not in a Mozartean or Bachian sense, surely; this piece possesses the raw, primal beauty of Bartok, or Le Sacre du Printemps. It is a textural, spatial experience, detailed and evolving like a forest or tidepool. This is beautiful not like a painting of a landscape, but like hiking to the top of the mountain through the trees and snow and rocks is. Harsh, exhausting, but a beautiful experience well worth the effort.

Nikolas,

Thanks for sharing this; I thought it was fantastic.

I have to disagree with a lot of the comments about there not being a true climax or resolution, because I found there to be both of those and very effective. The piece creates a certain kind of discomfort, from all the thick, dissonant harmony. It's very intense. While I do think that asking the listener to feel that discomfort for over 10 minutes without resolution is a big ask, I think it pays off immensely at the close of the piece. The final chord, while by no means a consonant resolution, works perfectly as that final breath (was this what you intended?) and a moment of solace where all the tension built up by the piece is released.

Well done on an excellent piece of music!

Michael.

cooperboy: Thanks for the compliments. Glad you enjoyed it and found the 'hiden' beauty in it. :)

Nik -

I don't think I ever commented on this piece!

Well, what I think is the strongest attribute and quite admirable:

- the dramatic arch is excellent

- the consistency of motivic interplay and textural development works very well

- you work extremely well with restricted set of orchestral colors and create quite a wide variety of nuances and colors.

What I wish were better:

- I am unsure if you were conscious of it at the time but once in awhile I could hear ocassional film music references that though well handled sometimes bordered on cliche for my tastes. Examples - the chromatic rising run in the violins about midway through which is taken up by the other instruments reminded me of part of the famous string motif from hermann's music to Psycho; the harp glissandi up and down just struck me (possibly it was just the placement of it or what instruments were playing with it) just a tad too reminiscent of a a film dream scene.

- I welcomed the grand pauses in your work -- I just wished for a few more moments of more transparent texture.

Anyway, as you can read from my critiques, they stem mostly from my taste preferences. Also, I have heard your more recent piano piece so I imagine your style has changed quite a bit (though you did a fine job learning orchestration from great orchestral composers - Ravel, Bernard Hermann et al) I do recommend you submit this to the Astoria Music Society -- they have a community orchestra which can play Brahms Wagner AND new works pretty well. The conductor Silas Huff is always looking for new scores. They perform at smaller venues in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. This piece should get exposure in NYC and a premiere of your work in NYC - if you don't have one already - would look good on your cv. Anyway go to astoriamusic.org for more details about the synphony and their chamber group.

I plan to attend Astoria Symphony's Oct 11th concert which plans to playthe Berg Violin Concerto, Revueltas' La Noche de los Mayas and two new premiers by two New York City composers - Steve Horowitz and Angelica Negron. PM me if you are interested Nick.

CO

CO2 (anthrax? :D)

Thanks for the comments.

To reply on your 'negative' comments (not negative per se and I welcome such detailed comments).

- You are right, now, after 4-5 years I see the film music references. But do keep in mind that I never was a huge fan of soundtrack music. I do have around 20 CDs of OSTs and that's all! In the particular work I got many refferences from Stravinsky (Rite of Spring) and Prokofiev (Scythian Suite), which is most probable where I got the various motifes.

In all I do hope that I did steal some things, but I hope I got them from the 'original' places and not from film scores! :D

I do have to say that I don't mind that it reminds a bit of film scoring. I was quite negative at such comments when I first wrote the piece, but not anymore. (The glissandi was aimed at Ravel.)

- I agree completely. I do find that it's almost breathless! More pauses would work. And it's all ranging f-fff at 80% of the times! (not the dynamics but the orchestration as well). The other thing is that it is very much tonal, since it's using very specific pitches for a looooooong time. But, I think that this has worked out pretty well.

_______________

I'm most interested in such exposure. I will contact Silas Huff. In fact I will be in Seattle (which, ok, is a loooong way from NYC, but anyways) in a month or so, so I do hope to get more exposure this way.

I will PM you for further details.

Thanks

PS. I have changed in 4-5 years time, I hope. ;) Plus all of those years were years of 'formal' education in composition.

OMG - if this was written before "formal" composition training then I'm doubly impressed. Yes, please pm me when you are in Seattle. If you have a more rrecent orchestral work and have a rough replay of it, please send that. Just remind me before October 11th -- I could pass along somebasic info about you if I meet Silas at the concert.

Oh, would you have time to checkout a piece (short one) I revised recently after I posted it here? Don't want to post it again as I need the memory space for some assignments for SSC, so may I e-mail a pdf and midi of it to you? Plan to submit this revised piece to a new music festival for performance. It is a set of virtuosic variations for clarinet.