Nate's Notations

[EigenUser]

Here is something for violin and large orchestra that I am working on -- "Appassionato" (working title) for violin and large orchestra. Schmaltzy, I know, but I plan for this to be the development. I usually don't write from "beginning to end", hence the reason this is a random section in the middle. I'd like to have it start off very austere. Any opinions?

[audio]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/naqbtlwsm9wk2p8/ViolinRhapsody_Orch_SlowPartAudio.mp3[/audio]

It reminds me a little bit of the flower theme from Messiaen's "Turangalila-Symphonie", but I actually started this a few years ago before I knew any Messiaen.

Scoring (will likely change):
-2 Flutes
-2 Oboes
-2 Bb Clarinets
-1 Bass Bb Clarinet (not doubled)
-3 Bassoons
-1 Contrabasson (not doubled)
-4 Horns in F
-2 Trumpets
-2 Trombones
-5 Timpani (1 player)
-2 Percussionists
   -Bass Drum
   -Xylophone
   -Glockenspiel
   -Vibraphone
-2 Harps
-10 1st Violins
-10 2nd Violins
-8 Violas
-8 Cellos
-6 Basses

[Karl Henning]

Will enjoy checking this out when I get home, thanks!

[EigenUser]

Will enjoy checking this out when I get home, thanks!

Thanks! It means a lot! Even though it is embarrassingly schmaltzy .

Here are the three pages of the score. Pardon the messy notation -- I'll fix it up when I actually get something decent down.

[Karl Henning]

Very nice, and well scored.

How does the piece begin?

[EigenUser]

Very nice, and well scored.

How does the piece begin?

Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out! I have worked on it a little bit this morning and ended up with something that I might be able to work with. It quietly starts the violin solo alternating on (low) D and F and a D-drone in the bass section. A contrabassoon solo comes in and is later joined by bass clarinet. I think that I have Ravel's LH PC in my subconscious -- I mean, where else would I get the idea for a contrabassoon solo?

Thanks!

[Karl Henning]

Don't force or rush it . . . getting off on the right foot is one of the keys . . . .

[EigenUser]

Here's one that I started last year (short, c.a. 2''45'). Working title is "Praeludium Dramatica". Intended to be part of a set of pieces for orchestra. It ends with an offstage horn playing a slightly-flat "G" (harmonic) and it is intended for this drone to form the basis of the next piece (played without pause).

It isn't quite complete (notice it is sparse around 1:10 with only violins playing).
[audio]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/8fz44wz7vgy0p16/PraeludiumDramatica.mp3[/audio]

Scoring (I don't remember the numbers off of the top of my head and I'm too tired to go through it and figure it out now):
-Piccolo
-Flutes
-Oboes
-Clarinets
-Bassoons
-Three horns (including one offstage)
-Timpani
-Xylophone
-Bass drum, gong, triangle, yada yada yada
-Piano
-Strings (the usual)

[EigenUser]

Here are two (new) pages that lead up to what I initially posted (which I changed slightly to include more "motion" so it would fit better with this). Time signature should be 4/4, not 2/2. Not sure how that happened...

[EigenUser]

Here are some miscellaneous pages of a runner-up for "The Worst Viola Sonata Ever" . I started this about two years ago

The first movement is very brutal and hammering. The low fortissimo 16-note octaves from the piano are inspired by one of Messiaen's "Vingt Regards" (care to guess which?).



The second movement is programmatic. I imagine going to a field with a telescope on a clear night. Searching for a good location to put the tripod, the character hears all of the "night-music" (crickets, frogs, etc.). When the character looks through the telescope they are taken aback by a spectacular view of a meteor shower (marked "con sbalordimento", or "with astonishment"). I have no idea where I got this idea from, but that's what it is.

[Karl Henning]

Looks tasty!

[EigenUser]

Here is audio for the first movement of the viola sonata. There is a pause for a few seconds at 1:15 (roughly after the first three pages) and I'm at a loss for ideas here, but the ending is finished (the 4th page posted, marked as page 8 at the top). Note that the length of the pause has nothing to do with the length of what I will include there eventually. The main theme comes back, but it is played in fifths by the viola.

[audio]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/yktdh238u9vaegg/Vla_Son_audio.mp3[/audio]

Thoughts?


EDIT: I just found these little "notes" that I wrote a while back. Sometimes I write program-type notes while I am writing music. It seems like putting the cart before the horse since I'm writing program notes for something that hasn't been finished yet, but it helps me sort out my ideas. I recognize that the notes are written too well for what the piece actually is, by the way, so I don't want to come across as pretentious.

I started composing my Sonata for Viola and Piano in the Summer of 2012, and each of its three movements remain incomplete (although planned out) as I write this. Even though it is a decidedly and unabashedly contemporary-sounding work, it serves a purpose of being accessible with recognizable, recurring themes and motifs. The sonata also represents a culmination of my musical influences thus far.

I. Agitato
Sub-marked as feroce, this introductory movement combines a frantic and arabian-inspired melody from the viola with thunderous chromaticism looming from the piano's lower register. As I was composing this, I imagined a violent supercell thunderstorm forming over the American midwestern landscape (represented by the thunderous piano) as residents scurry to clear the area (the frenzied, hoedown-gone wrong theme played by the viola).

I was going to call the first movement something like "State of Emergency" or "Special Weather Statement".

[Karl Henning]

Here is audio for the first movement of the viola sonata. There is a pause for a few seconds at 1:15 (roughly after the first three pages) and I'm at a loss for ideas here, but the ending is finished (the 4th page posted, marked as page 8 at the top). Note that the length of the pause has nothing to do with the length of what I will include there eventually. The main theme comes back, but it is played in fifths by the viola.

[audio]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/yktdh238u9vaegg/Vla_Son_audio.mp3[/audio]

Thoughts?


EDIT: I just found these little "notes" that I wrote a while back. Sometimes I write program-type notes while I am writing music. It seems like putting the cart before the horse since I'm writing program notes for something that hasn't been finished yet, but it helps me sort out my ideas. I recognize that the notes are written too well for what the piece actually is, by the way, so I don't want to come across as pretentious.

I started composing my Sonata for Viola and Piano in the Summer of 2012, and each of its three movements remain incomplete (although planned out) as I write this. Even though it is a decidedly and unabashedly contemporary-sounding work, it serves a purpose of being accessible with recognizable, recurring themes and motifs. The sonata also represents a culmination of my musical influences thus far.

I. Agitato
Sub-marked as feroce, this introductory movement combines a frantic and arabian-inspired melody from the viola with thunderous chromaticism looming from the piano's lower register. As I was composing this, I imagined a violent supercell thunderstorm forming over the American midwestern landscape (represented by the thunderous piano) as residents scurry to clear the area (the frenzied, hoedown-gone wrong theme played by the viola).

I was going to call the first movement something like "State of Emergency" or "Special Weather Statement".

I'm missing the audio, but that may be the browser/settings here at the office.  Will look in again from home.

[Karl Henning]

I like it;  how long will the complete movement be?

[EigenUser]

I like it;  how long will the complete movement be?

Thanks !

I'm thinking c.a. 5'. I'm busy working on the "Appassionato", which I retitled "With/Against" after seeing someone (North Star, I believe) mention something about the root words of the word "concerto" on another thread. I didn't want to hold myself to an "Appassionato" nor did I want to call it a concerto. It's turning out to be more of what the piano is in Messiaen's "Turangalila-Symphonie" -- a major player with some difficult cadenzas, but still not a "concerto".

[Karl Henning]

How is this progressing?

[EigenUser]

How is this progressing?

I got distracted when I got the sheet music for the Bartok Improvisations and had a sudden and violent urge to orchestrate the piece. 

That is pretty typical of me. I enjoy orchestrating more than I do creating from scratch, so I will work on something of my own, get distracted by some orchestrating, and then continue. I think my orchestration skills are above par (considering I have no formal training) while my creativity (carrying a melody/idea/counter-idea) skills are depressingly sub-par. My works turn out best when working from a previously-made short score (i.e. piano reduction beforehand). Unfortunately, I rarely take the time to do this because I'm so anxious to jump into the fun part -- orchestration!

Here is a short piano piece I wrote (part of a larger "notebook" I add to when I get ideas). It is partly inspired by my trip to NYC this past March, and partly inspired by the first of the Ligeti etudes.
[audio]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/j3uduucrsrki67u/PianoPieceRev1.mp3[/audio]

[Ian Moore]

It looks like you deal with the part writing really well. You really keep the woodwinds busy. Do you have a completed orchestration that we could look at?

Keep up the good work.

[EigenUser]

It looks like you deal with the part writing really well. You really keep the woodwinds busy. Do you have a completed orchestration that we could look at?

Keep up the good work.

Oops, I forgot about this. This is the score for what I have completed (there isn't anymore that is orchestrated). I was writing a Rhapsody for violin and piano a few years ago which started out great, but ended up going nowhere. I am basing this work off of some stuff rescued from the unfinished Rhapsody.

[EigenUser]

Here is the first page of a piano piece from May 2014 that I rejected on several grounds (one of which was that it sounds too similar to Boulez's Derive I). I am posting it here because I don't want to ruin the Berg thread with my music .

It is the only twelve-tone work I have finished and the tone row consists of the "white-key" pentatonic scale, the "black-key" pentatonic scale, and then a dyad consisting of the two "leftover" notes 'B' and 'E'. Namely, the row is (CDFGA)(C#D#F#G#A#)[BE]. Hence, I call the piece (2x5) + 2.

I'm not sure I understand fully how tone rows affect the way music is composed. So if your tone row is (CDFGA)(C#D#F#G#A#)(BE) it means you "can't" use chords like C F G# because G# is too far from C and F in the tone row? I know tone rows tell which notes are available, but what about their order in the row? What does that mean? What doesn the subgroups in the parenthesis mean? Chord progression? But what really is chord progression?

No need to teach me math here

The parenthesis are just indicating the layout of the row. I forgot to write that the square brackets indicate that the notes can be permuted, i.e. [BE]. I tried to set up some rules for myself to follow as I was planning the piece, but I don't think I followed them consistently. Hence why I wish to eventually rewrite it.

You are correct about the chords. One of my 'rules' (maybe 'objectives' is a better word) that I remember is that if two non-adjacent notes sound at the same time (for instance, 'D' and 'A'), all other notes in between them in the tone-row sequence must also sound, thus creating a "block" chord. So if the bold text represents a note being sounded, this wouldn't exist in theory:
(CDFGA)(C#D#F#G#A#)[BE],
but this would:
(CDFGA)(C#D#F#G#A#)[BE],

I also wanted to try and minimize (but not entirely avoid) minor seconds, since this interval doesn't occur in the pentatonic scale and didn't want to contaminate the pentatonic sound with an un-natural interval. Therefore, I tried to keep myself from "crossing" the parenthesis in block chords. So, as an example, this would be bad:
(CDFGA)(C#D#F#G#A#)[BE]

I did use tremolos between block chords from each of the pentatonic components. For instance, there are places where the chords CDFGA and C#D#F#G#A# are adjacent in tremolo, but not sounded at the same time.

It still is art, though, and there is much subjectivity. Every twelve-tone composer operates differently -- some more strictly than others. I don't really like writing music like this, but I wanted to try it for fun. I'll try it again sometime, probably.