Spring sextet for wind

[David]

As we're on the subject of a wind quintet, I thought I might test out the music tab here to see if it works and indeed it seems as if it does!

I wrote a wind sextet (to be found under the Music tab) following on from the inspiration of Janacek's "Mladi (Youth)" a while ago. Those who know the piece will probably recognize a couple of quotations from one of my favourite works for wind ensemble. This little piece also tries to portray the innocence, idealism and high spirits of youth. A bass clarinet is added to the typical wind quintet. As it's relatively short by my standards and not too demanding, I'd hope, I thought I might post it here to break the ice. I'm not looking for detailed critique (in fact having another listen to this before posting, I realised several changes were necessary) but would gladly hear from anyone who happens to respond to it.

 

Incidentally, the individual movements are as follows:

1. allegretto

2. adagietto 5'00"

3. vivace 11'16"

[HS Teoh]

Finally found some time to give this a listen. Unfortunately, not in the best aural environment so what I'm about to say may be based on a highly distorted perception of the actual piece...

In general it sounded to me more contemplative and somewhat brooding, than idealistic. Loved what sounded like bird call imitations against what sounded like a serene nature backdrop on a forest trail by a small lake. Unfortunately I didn't hear any high spirits here. Maybe it's because of the loud fan in the background; I'll have to give this another listen another time for a fairer evaluation of it.

Anyhow, felt like the second movement was too much like the first in terms overall mood; on paper the tempo is different but it sounded almost the same to my ears. I was expecting more interesting contrasts, but got what sounded like more of the same, just with different themes. The last movement was thankfully refreshingly different, with a livelier tempo and more drama. Still, I did find myself wishing there was more drama and excitement. But perhaps I'm just totally missing the point of this piece.

This is really just a preliminary brain dump of how I reacted to a first listen, and that not under the best of environments. I'll have to listen again some other time in a quieter place to get a more accurate picture.

[David]

Thanks for having a listen, HS. As our musical tastes seem very different, I hadn't expected you to really respond to this piece of whimsical romanticism and indeed you have a point -- the high sprits are largely restricted to the finale. When Janacek wrote Mladi, he was already 72 so my work as well is perhaps more a nostalgic look back to youth from a wiser perspective.

Incidentally, I happened to listen to some of this and heard the horn is a fifth flat from the second movement -- it's playing as if transposed which it wasn't. An obscure bug in Dorico but I worked around it and redid the audio export so I think it's now what I actually wrote....