# Alchemy for large orchestra



## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

Thought I'd post this as I just finished it up.

View the full score and all parts here


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

I listened to this but it didn't do anything for me. It sounded like a exercise in random dissonance. 

So I thought i'd look at the parts and, as a horn aficionado, noted you used 8 horns! But looking at the score, I'm not sure why. There are so few parts where the horns are playing different notes at the same time. Do you really have it in your budget or expect your orchestra to hire the additional 3-4 horn players to fill this part out for three measures (104-106)? Why not distribute these notes amongst the other brass who are not playing at this point? 

Then I tried to find out the rental prices for the contrabass instruments indicated in your score, and was only able to find the contrabass winds. I did find the cimbasso for rent. These are not instruments that most people have readily available. This should be in your budget as well.

I hope you are writing for your own pleasure to play back on a midi because I doubt you will find an orchestra willing to give this impractical piece a go. It appears that you are simply writing to include as many unusual instruments,effects, and mutes as possible.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I realize you have the luxury of virtual instruments and with a piece like this, do not plan on a call for actual players, BUT the advice is the same as last time. Until you can make all those instruments count (and you haven't, at all) stay away from the gigantism which is your current obsession. A truly bigger and more resonant sound can be had from a traditional sized orchestra, but that requires writing far better for instruments than you have (yet again) done here.

If you stay with this large palette, the odds you will really learn to make that big sound effectively, with a standard or humongous orchestra, are slight.

It did not seem at all much 'dissonant' to me, but I used to put on Prokofiev's second piano concerto while eating breakfast when still a middle school student... Chacun à son goût.

Have to say a predilection for repetition, even with slight variants, results in something numbing, and it is so thin that that too, is at odds with this surplus of instruments (and surplus they are, with really nothing vital to add) and by 03'50'' it does sound like a series of short sketches randomly pasted together. The musical ideas don't sound at all like they are FOR a large orchestra, but more a chamber group or orchestra at best.

ADD: an important thing to contemplate. 
A luxury of instruments, virtual or no, are subject to need. What is needed for the musical idea. When we have this literal surplus, it sounds like dressing. *I maintain you will not learn how to write well for large orchestra until you have written chamber music, and progressively worked your way up. Here is why: the practice breeds familiarity, and eventually you start having musical ideas directly in orchestral terms of thought.* Now, everything sounds literally transferred and dressed up from a simple keyboard lick.

Both the least thoughtful and the most educated listener recognizes 'something' when there is no real reason for its being there, and that is quite true of all that dressing. If you want to study some extraordinary writing for extraordinary forces, listen / look at Bernard Hermann's scores where he uses double or triple low woodwinds, or eleven harps... those in a time when all was scored, parts written, and real players required. This music is directly conceived of for those forces, to a specific effect, which is why they are needed, not the other way around 

Virtual or otherwise, there is something all listeners expect, a reason for those sounds coming out of those instruments. END ADD.

Look at Debussy, La Mer or L'apres midi, to see how much sound is to be had from a much smaller band -- he often got near as much color and resonance out of that than did Ravel with larger forces.

P.s. I feel now at the opposite end of when I was a student, my teacher would look over my score, say nothing about what was working, point out weaknesses and question all the rest. At times I felt like I'd been cut into bleeding pieces, those then salted for good measure, pushed out the door (or under it) and expected back next week with solutions and / or improvement.

Safe to say, we all, I think, expect you back, "next week."


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to write such lengthy replies, that's very much appreciated. Will definitely start working with smaller orchestras, particularly in the brass. I'd like to add however, that I was not adding 'random instruments and mutes'. The bucket mute trombone blends with clarinet, thus the need for lower auxillary clarinets. the straight mute trumpet blends with oboe. and the fiber mute french horn blends with the flutes. This is all laid in in Henry Brant's text if you'd like to learn more about timbrel combinations. It all served very specific purposes and functions.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

chee_zee said:


> I'd like to add that I was not adding 'random instruments and mutes'. The bucket mute trombone blends with clarinet, thus the need for lower auxiliary clarinets. The straight mute trumpet blends with oboe. and the fiber mute french horn blends with the flutes.


Boyo, you could rationalize your way out of a closed paper bag! The point is, none of that is _audible_, and other than your urgent want to write big and get a grasp on orchestral timbres (_"Yesterday, and make that snappy!"_ lol), it is moot. The very thin musical material did not need, and indeed, does not support the instrumentation you detail.

I noticed too, your piece for organ. There also, you have the ease and readiness of hitting one or more stops in registration and getting a 'falsely full' sound -- that is part of the same slant you are giving your instrumental compositions, and that piece suffers from similar flaws.



chee_zee said:


> This is all laid in in Henry Brant's text if you'd like to learn more about timbrel combinations. It all served very specific purposes and functions.


If you can write and orchestrate like Brant, you wouldn't be here.

Brant ~ on the nature of things.


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