# Probably my best non-solo piece so far, but still a long way to go



## Guest (Sep 6, 2018)

Here's the score. The engraving process took quite a while, but I'm fairly happy with how it turned out.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ex0bnwq2rjw6og7/Koan.pdf?dl=0

I'll be able to post a recording in a few months time.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Is this the 'meaning' and stuff piece, right? What happened to that? Anyway, I remember that what I saw of it was pretty good and agree that it shows a jump in your developmemt. Looking forward for the recording. I'm particularly curious to see if that introduction works (what comes after certainly does).

Hey, you may be still at time to catch with Boulez after all, who composed his utter masterpiece 2nd piano sonata at age 20. I kinda lost hopes after all that teddy bear music, but now I regained them


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## Guest (Sep 6, 2018)

aleazk said:


> Is this the 'meaning' and stuff piece, right? What happened to that? Anyway, I remember that what I saw of it was pretty good and agree that it shows a jump in your developmemt. Looking forward for the recording. I'm particularly curious to see if that introduction works (what comes after certainly does).
> 
> Hey, you may be still at time to catch with Boulez after all, who composed his utter masterpiece 2nd piano sonata at age 20. I kinda lost hopes after all that teddy bear music, but now I regained them


I thought he was 21 when he wrote that! 

And also, I changed the title because the other title was a silly title.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

How old are you if you don't mind me asking? Where did you study composition? Who were your primary teachers? Just curious.


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## Guest (Sep 7, 2018)

Torkelburger said:


> How old are you if you don't mind me asking? Where did you study composition? Who were your primary teachers? Just curious.


I'm 21 and I'm studying composition at the University of Melbourne. I've had a variety of teachers; currently my teacher is Christine McCombe.


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## Guest (Sep 7, 2018)

Ah there are a few mistakes I made in the PDF file for the performance notes and I think I repeated a couple of the scanned pages of the manuscript a few too many times (whoops) I better fix that this weekend.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

This is a well-written piece and shows a maturity well beyond your years. Quite adventuresome and bold for your age as well. What I like the most about the piece and what shows your maturity the most is that you’ve chosen to work with limited resources, selecting only 3-5 or so effects for each instrument. In doing this, it unifies the material, holds the material together, and leads to a wholeness in the piece. It allows you to concentrate on what you want to express and develop a sense of detail. Most beginners will just use every effect at their disposal, everything they can think of all at once, with disastrous results.

The score preparation is to professional standards. I really like the dynamics which are well thought out and are apt to the affective landscape you have created. I like the expressive arch of the piece, the buildup and denouement, the single broad stroke of sound over several minutes. The music is very difficult, but should be playable with enough rehearsal (or a conductor might help). Mostly it will be working out the rhythms. Overall, I would have liked to have seen more articulations to make it more apparent to the players how to play the notes and phrasings. I also would have liked to have seen more exploration of extreme registers especially in the violin and piano in the climactic section along with more clusters and double and triple stops (also in the cello). But that’s just my taste.


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## Guest (Sep 8, 2018)

Thanks for the feedback! Hmmm, I guess I would have to think about articulations a little bit more. I don't fully know what kind of musical interpretation the musicians will make of this yet, but when I get a chance to hear it outside of my own head for the first time I would probably have a better idea of what sorts of articulations would be most effective as a means of communication to the musicians via the score. 

Tbh, I'm not a huge fan of clusters, but I do like to establish a gradation between least dense and most dense chords and imply a kind of traditional chord hierarchy in the established harmonic language. (in this case, everything was built from various transformations of the set 0,2,6. Different densities are established through how pitches are spaced out in register, how many different pitches are heard in a certain length of time, and how different transformations of the set overlap with one another, creating the closest thing to a cluster I'm willing to go, or at other times hinting at major triads and revealing perfects fifths buried within the harmonic structure). 

Finding ways to explore extreme registers is still a bit of an issue for me and something I would definitely like to improve upon, thanks so much for the reminder.


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## Guest (Oct 12, 2018)

Dropbox link to audio file if anyone would like to take a listen. This was just from a read through, so there are mistakes, but this will give you an idea of how it sounds. Any thoughts/feedback?

Personally, I'm pretty confident that this is the best I can do in terms of chamber music at the moment. I'd love to get some advice on where I can go next. How can I 'mature' my music to the next level?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I think this piece is an evolution in your development in the sense that there's an evident improvement in your technical understanding of the craft. At the stylistic level, you have finally abandoned certain childish (in a bad sense) sensitivities (reflected in previous pieces in the preponderance of certain monotony in both harmony and rhythm) and in favor of a more emotionally mature international or cosmopolitan style.

And, since you ask, I think the next level would be to influx this somewhat impersonal international style with a more personal touch. But this development will occur only at the long term, also related to your own personal maturation, which will only occur, probably, after you reach 25 years of age (the brain still develops until the late 20s). So, this aspect is not something you can work as other technical elements, but is something that will come along with the years and experience.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2018)

Thanks, aleazk. Looking back, those childish sensitivities are certainly present in earlier works and I can hear the vestiges of them in this piece at the following points:
- flute and clarinet in bar 36
- the 'flautando' violin and cello passage beginning at bar 41
- bars 60 and 61
- the 8 against 9 contrary motion motif in the piano beginning in bar 63
- overall too much low C from bar 95

I certainly look forward to my compositions after the age of 25.....this piece still feels pretty raw. I don't know exactly where I am going, but something will naturally happen by then, I _hope._


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Lol, now that you mention it, I did hear some vestiges but preferred not to mention them so as to not sound too picky after all the actual improvement. There are some short passages in which the harmony sounds a bit like a whole tone scale*, whose flat, in terms of tension, sound feels a bit out of place and arbitrary with the rest of the piece, and somewhat reminiscent of those old sensitivities. Not sure in which bars, I didn't check with that precision...

*maybe you didn't put it explicitly and is just the result of the combination of notes from different instruments.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2018)

Dang, I actively had to fight against too much 'whole tone scale' sonorities, but I guess the basic pitch set used to derive the harmonies from meant that it would come through here and there. But the way I combined transformations of the set into 6-note chords was with the intention of avoiding too much whole tone-ness......thanks for picking up on that.


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

Love it! I like the mixture of abstract chromaticism and passing single notes between instruments. I love that rhythmic style too. Boulez can be a bit fast and wild for my taste, and this sounds more controlled and purposeful. I'd like to see the score. The link in the original post isn't working for me.


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## Guest (Oct 15, 2018)

Ohhh right, no worries! The score is here. I made some slight changes to it before I got it bound and I deleted the old file from dropbox.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I am also impressed and think you hold great promise.


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## Guest (Oct 15, 2018)

arpeggio said:


> I am also impressed and think you hold great promise.


Thanks for listening, arpeggio.


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