# jess's compositions



## Lilijana

Hello! Thought I'd share my works in here by making a thread for it. You can expect a number of finished works, sketches, texts, ideas and general updates on my composition work over time in here. 

I've been composing for a number of years now and I think this is a direction I would like to pursue for the future, in both instrumental/vocal and electronic mediums.

I don't have a lot I would like to share at this moment, but I will let you know when a recording of a string quartet I wrote will be coming through, played by JACK Quartet who are amazing and I love them to bits.

In the meantime here's an electroacoustic work I made which you can stream. I have been trying to get used to slower paced, longer forms, and I hope I have been able to at least achieve _something_ with this, even though this probably isn't all that good.


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## Captainnumber36

The link you gave didn't work.


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## Lilijana

Ah, just fixed that, it should work now!


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## Captainnumber36

It works now. I just started up Blue, it's very interesting, it seems this music would work well for a horror movie soundtrack.


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## Phil loves classical

You look oddly familiar Jess. Are you sure there is nothing you want to shirime?


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## Lilijana

Phil loves classical said:


> You look oddly familiar Jess. Are you sure there is nothing you want to shirime?


Hello Phil, nice to see you here, I seem to have forgotten my old account details but I'd much rather not go back to any old accounts since coming out as female.


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## Phil loves classical

No worries, I had always taken you for a female.


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## Lilijana

This is a text I have put together for a cantata being premiered in 2020. I will have finished the majority of the music by February, so expect to see some progress updates from time to time! Thoughts and feedback is most welcome.


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## Captainnumber36

composer jess said:


> This is a text I have put together for a cantata being premiered in 2020. I will have finished the majority of the music by February, so expect to see some progress updates from time to time! Thoughts and feedback is most welcome.


Heavy words! Very forceful and commanding.


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## Lilijana

Captainnumber36 said:


> Heavy words! Very forceful and commanding.


Thanks! Kind of inspired by the directness of Brecht, although I didn't actually use any of his texts. I hope to have created at least something of a loose narrative with the way I have organised these.


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## tdc

Sounds like a well put together compilation jess. It seems like I hear some elements that remind me of other composers in here, such as Xenakis and Francisco Lopez. I'm not really an expert in this aesthetic, so my question is, do you feel you have taken your influences and expanded this style in some way? Do you see this effort as pushing boundaries in some ways (if so how?), or more so a combination of different contemporary stylistic traits you enjoy?


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## Lilijana

tdc said:


> Sounds like a well put together compilation jess. It seems like I hear some elements that remind me of other composers in here, such as Xenakis and Francisco Lopez. I'm not really an expert in this aesthetic, so my question is, do you feel you have taken your influences and expanded this style in some way? Do you see this effort as pushing boundaries in some ways (if so how?), or more so a combination of different contemporary stylistic traits you enjoy?


Thanks so much for the questions! I don't really see myself as trying to push any new boundaries with this work or even expanding the style, but rather this piece is more of a personal exploration in working with longer time frames and structural possibilities. It's a big learning curve, for me, so having pieces which are not notated and I can put together whilst being able to listen back in real time and tweak it helps me to get a better understanding of longer forms for my notated works which don't have the same kind of freedom.

The other aspect of it is that I like to write music that I enjoy to listen to, and there's a lot of contemporary music that I enjoy to listen to.


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## Lilijana

*Praxis, op. 19*

Although _Colours_ has been designated opus 20, it actually uses material which I have derived from electronic tracks that I made earlier for _Praxis_ which is opus 19. Although _Praxis_ is being finished afterwards....

Anyway, I had done a bit of the ending of _Praxis_ and today got around to engraving the first minute of it.

Here's the score:
View attachment Praxis 191226 - Full Score.pdf


And here's a MIDI realisation with the electronic track that I put together on logic:
View attachment 191226.mp3


I hope the attachments work!

If you heard _Colours_ you might recognise where the electronic bits in the opening of _Praxis_ come from.


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## Phil loves classical

Sounds a lot like a prog rock piece to me. I like the camp.


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## Lilijana

I would love to share a more recent recording of a piece I wrote in 2018, called _Palimpsest_ because it is essentially an attempt to 'write over' a movement of a quartet by Mozart, with aspects of his music sometimes audible underneath the new music I wrote.

This is from the American premiere in NYC last month by JACK Quartet. (The world premiere was in Germany in 2018.)


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## Vasks

Enjoyed it, Jess. Man, how on earth can they play your ending so super soft?

And it goes without saying, having the JACK play it, will open a number of future doors. Push it hard and often on prospective musicians regardless of their instrumentation. 

I actually met the JACK quartet back in 2011 at a New Music Festival reception in the host's home. There were an awful lot of younger composers chewing the quartet members' ears off in order to make an impression. LOL!!

BTW, I looked at your Praxis score and the one thing that I didn't like was the location of your page numbers. They're too close to the top staff causing me to think those numbers have something to do with the rhythm of the top staff. You might want to consider a different location.


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## Lilijana

Yes, having JACK play my music looks _very_ nice on my CV 

and thanks for the tip regarding page number location. Better off at the bottom of each page instead?


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## Lilijana

composer jess said:


> I would love to share a more recent recording of a piece I wrote in 2018, called _Palimpsest_ because it is essentially an attempt to 'write over' a movement of a quartet by Mozart, with aspects of his music sometimes audible underneath the new music I wrote.
> 
> This is from the American premiere in NYC last month by JACK Quartet. (The world premiere was in Germany in 2018.)


I find this recording to be a bit too tinny and dry, with dynamic range that is far too wide. Once I get the thumbs up to post my newly edited version of this recording that fixes some of the issues with it, I'll post a link to it.


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## Lilijana

I edited the recording a little to make less tinny

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https://soundcloud.com/jess-maticevski%2Fpalimpsest-1


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