I am interested in a wide variety of music, although my own tends towards modernism. I grew up on jazz and pop music of the 1970s, but was blown away by Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Lutoslawski, and Penderecki while in college. I haven't looked back since. You might hear all of them in my music, as well as others, especially if you listen to my fourth symphony, which I just finished the first draft. It's posted on my YouTube channel, but I'm still tinkering with it. I'll post a link when I'm totally happy with it.
Music
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"Thanks for your kind remarks David. I'll try to answer your questions as succinctly as I am able.
Harmonic relationships are determined by how much overlap there is between the sets. If you take a 12-note row and divide it in half, then there is no…"
Harmonic relationships are determined by how much overlap there is between the sets. If you take a 12-note row and divide it in half, then there is no…"
"About the closest you will hear me getting to a fugue is about 5 minutes into my 4th symphony, which hints at a (double?) fugue, but doesn't really make it to the 4th exposition, as it is interrupted. One of my early pieces (In a Dream) has a fugue…"
"I used to listen to a lot of Peter Menin, and I wish he was played more often. I suppose your movement sounds like him, typical of the "dissonant counterpoint" style. I agree with HS that it sounds like a movement or section of a larger work. It…"
"I assume that David was responding to HS's comment. Along the same line, it isn't the theory that drives the composition of my music. While I am always aware of the theory, the piece itself originates organically. When I start, I don't know its…"
"I must confess that I am remiss that I don't comment on other people's music enough. To be honest, music of a certain (common) aesthetic doesn't interest me, and sometimes it is better for me not to say anything unless there is a specific question.…"
"I was all ready to run with the music theory angle that this thread had turned, but now I see that it has turned back to the topic. I think what I might do is combine them in a way ...
I have often been criticized for my music sounding to some ears…"
I have often been criticized for my music sounding to some ears…"
"FYI, the scrolling video of the trumpet concerto was an intermediate version before I translated it into Dorico, so it has a number of empty staves. They aren't in the final score."
I've posted some of my frustrations with learning Dorico before, but I just set my first string quartet in it. It isn't long, so it basically took me 3 days to come up with a satisfactory setting. The piece is from 1987, although I've made some…
"In Sibelius, I often create a playback score, although recently I haven't needed to. With NotePerformer I can get a high quality playback without having to resort to going to a DAW to create a playback. Those days when you go to a music store to…"
"These days, it is mostly parts. Composers don't want to do their own parts, and many don't know how. Many are keyboard players, and don't know what orchestral or band players need - how much time, how many cues, what cues ...
When Finale first came…"
When Finale first came…"
Right now, I earn my living setting music for pubishers, mostly parts. I need to use whatever software I am told to use. At the moment, composers are sending their scores to the publishers mostly in Finale and Sibelius, but with the recent sunset of…
"Thanks, Ivor. There is more. My blog has a link to the first version of the entire symphony; there is a link earlier in this thread. I have also added it to my music list, and that is (I think) the final version."
"I haven't looked at them seriously. My upgrade has sent me way over budget, and they would probably mean venturing into DAW-land. The ones I have are all old versions, so that would mean more expenditure and lots of time learning how to use it…"
"I built my own desktop, and the upgrade was more like $1200. I probably could have built the whole computer for about $1400, but I was able to save a few things. A laptop that would run it would be prohibitively expensive.
I've been working on a…"
I've been working on a…"
"I think they kept the solo strings for the Pro version to make more people switch up to it. That was what swayed me. Unfortunately, you need monster hardware to run it. I could barely use it until I gave my computer a major upgrade. I still can't…"
Bio
I'm a composer of instrumental music, including 4 symphonies, a suite of dwarf planet miniatures (Far From the Fading Light), concertos for piano, violin, flute, and euphonium, 5 string quartets (the fifth won 1st Prize, Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers 2021), as well as a host of chamber music.
I'm am transitioning from teaching at CCM in Cincinnati toward full-time freelancing as a music engraver/typesetter, which I have done since the early 1990s (full time until 2012, when I returned to teaching). My octet, Labyrinth, has been recorded and should be (finally) released this spring, if not before. The BIS recording of my reorchestration of Per Nørgård's Helle Nacht (Violin Concerto No. 1) was critically acclaimed, although I wasn't credited on the recording, and the Grammophone reviewer thought the arrangement was done by the composer:
Herresthal plays here the reduction for chamber orchestra Nørgård made at his suggestion in 2002, which gives the music an extra transparency that proves even more beguiling than the original, which is accordingly not directly comparable.
