Scotorum tempestas -- symphony no. 17?

my most recently completed work actually came to some extent in two parts -- and with some hesitation as the actual nature of the piece. I was originally inspired by a work about "Rain" by Steve Elcock to write something weather-related and in due course an orchestral work in three movements came about on the fickle weather in my native land of Scotland. The first, "Storm and sunshine" eventually became allocated to autumn, then followed "Fog and Ice" and finally "Spring breezes" which more than a hint of frisky animals and birds at play. Many would argue that Scotland doesn't possess a summer season but a couple of weeks after completing the first three movements, I decided on a "Simmer Dim" fourth movement which refers in Scots to the never completely dark summer nights in the north of the country in particular. At this point, partly because this last movement is as much about about dreams and ideals than only the weather and partly because the work has a much greater thematic integration (virtually everything is based on the motifs heard in the first few seconds) and arguably intensity than a typical suite, plus the fairly typical four movement structure with an obvious scherzo third, I started to think in terms of this as being more a symphonic work than originally conceived. It will be interesting to see if the few who manage to listen to the piece agree or if the vote is that it's clearly just tone-painting.

As usual it can be found on Reelcrafter at the end of the list of symphonies where for the time being at least, it has been placed  https://play.reelcrafter.com/dko22/symphonies

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  • I didn't remember I'd even posted this here -- anyway, someone commented that there seemed to be some compression with the rendering which i found strange but then checked and realised I had indeed at some point accidentally reset the template to default for the audio export which meant my own reverb was lost and default Dorico compression was activated. So it certainly sounds more dynamic now and I made a number of improvements a couple of weeks back so it might be worth having another listen in case anyone noticed this in the first place.

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