In response to some very legitimate criticism of an earlier orchestral work of mine which lacked a central motif and introduced too many disjointed themes in a 33 minute overture, I decided to break the piece up and convert it into a symphony.
Here is the first movement with a very distinct unifying theme.
I fear however that I may have over-corrected and over-used the theme.
Please let me know what you think of the piece overall.
Thanks
https://musescore.com/user/28524096/scores/15079231
Comments
the opening, I thought was quite impressive. You build up the attractive Brucknerian theme quite nicely initially and then the second part from around 4'15" initially looks as if it's going to build up to a powerful climax but then it just fades away again and after a while there is a distinct impression of the progression lacking movement and purpose. One problem is a tendency to wrote in large homophonic blocks with only two or three different rhythms and too much punctuation with simply chords in places rather than any real counterpoint but the other is that my feeling -- which may be completely wrong -- is that the theme is more varied than developed in any meaningful sense and that the movement as a whole lacks drama. Perhaps others will have more success with this!
Thanks, David. Definitely appreciate the feedback. The passage that starts at 4:15 does have a climax at 4:23 which does fizzle out, because I didn't want a sustained one after the introduction. I wanted to save that for later.
I thought I had some passages with counterpoint at
1) 8:57 (Rehersal letter F) flute vs clarinet
2) 9:55 (Horns, vs violins vs lower strings)
3) 10:08 (Flute vsbasoon)
4) 14:41 (Strings vs Brass)
I agree that there is too much punctuation with block chords, but a lot of that was intended to convey a percussive effect. I'll take a second look at how to achieve that with less punctuation.
Thanks, again. I hope this version is at least a structural improvement over the previous longer version that you had kindly reviewed.