Search the Community

Hello everyone, I'm new to this site, but it looks like a good place to get some feedback. Please take a listen to the attached piece for string quartet and let me know what you think!

Hey everybody! Just wondering if any of you know of any pieces featuring harp and celeste together? I know of several orchestral scores with this instrumentation but I'm really interested in finding some smaller chamber works if you know of any (I'll gladly take new-to-me orchestral scores as well though, so feel free to add them if you know of any). I'm trying to get a feel for the sound of those instruments together.

How do you name your pieces? How do you decide what to name a composition of yours? Do you decide on a piece's name before you start composing it, after your start composing it, or after you finish composing it? Do you think the name you give a certain piece is important? In what does that importance consist? Does a piece's name influence how it is perceived? How? These questions apply especially to short pieces that may not have a clearly recognized form. They may be called by various different names like bagatelles, studies, etudes, etc. But they also apply to some extent to larger forms. But multi-movement works like "string quartet", "symphony", "piano trio" seem to usually be named either after the instruments they contain, or the number of instruments, or the form. But even if they employ the names of the instruments or the number of instruments in their construction, these names have come to have a connotation of form too. Thus I cannot write a short piece for string quartet and call it my "String Quartet No. 1" (or can I?). Tradition has it that a string quartet should follow a certain form and have several fully developed movements. But I can still compose a short piece For "string quartet". But that leaves the problem of naming it. I think a short piece FOR "string quartet" (i.e. for the same combinations of instruments the description of which has come to be used as the name for a certain type of multi-movement composition for it) thus suffers the "injustice" of having to be named while a full string quartet does not have to and can simply be called a "string quartet". But is it important to name a piece? Might one not even bother to name a piece? Does an unnamed piece suffer in any way? Does it even come to be neglected? Would a named piece direct greater attention to itself? To test the inherent theory in this last question, perhaps we can compare Beethoven's named piano sonatas like the "Pathetique", "Moonlight", "Waldstein", "Appassionata" and "Hammerklavier" and the attention they have received with other equally great nameless piano sonatas by Beethoven like Op. 110 & 111. Do the named sonatas enjoy greater success with performers and audiences? Or perhaps it is the other way round such that the sonatas that enjoy greater fame have come to be named? Should one follow a tradition of naming pieces? Or should one create one's own names? I have used some names to describe certain types of pieces (like "soliloquy" and "maxim"). I think I have done it in order to retain my freedom in composing and not to have to follow (or possibly be accused of ignoring) the traditions created by already given names.

Or that have served you as a model to follow in your compositions? If so, which pieces and in what way?

Is Formal Training In Composition Necessary At One Point Or Can One Find One's Way Just Through Practice Composing And Studying Pieces? What do you think? I have scarcely gotten any training and compose as an amateur. I am wondering how far I can go like this. Will I find my way to composing even symphonies, or would that necessitate some formal training? I know that Elgar became a composer through self-study. Would training generate symphonic ideas where none occurred before, or improve one's original ideas?