Symphony of love illusive

[jeanette_c]

Hey hey, the symphony of love illusive is finally done. A big thanks to @Rainmak3r for unintentionally giving me the motivation with his orchestral pieces. The symphony is quietly dedicated to a very dear friend. First here are the movements:
1. Allegro (Fantasia - maybe):
https://youtu.be/BC2RuiFDlOw
2. Molto Vivace (Scherzo - perhaps, certainly my pride and joy)
https://youtu.be/7vNi--527Sk
3. Larghetto (Lament - almost)
https://youtu.be/-FiuTQRRVF4
4. Andante Moderato[1] (Rondo Capriccioso - possibly)
https://youtu.be/sdYGqnYhyxA
[1] I was told, one could discuss the "Rondo" bit, but andante moderato is a joke.
The whole symphony was recorded with the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra (SSO), the free SFZ library that was long since linked from the LinuxSampler page. Only recently did I see the Virtual Player Orchestra and now I will have to record another orchestral piece some time soon to test that. Strings and brass were layered with self designed patches from my old Roland JV-1080 to flesh the sound out and allow for more dyanmic range.
There is only one consistency over the four movements: I did break forms.
Writing a symphony was a long term ambition, but I never began, since it sounded like so much work, which it was. It took about 14 working days, including composing, writing and recording.
The second movement, the Scherzo, is my pride and joy, since it is quite counterpunctual, including the quite choral slow theme, which opens the fourth movement and is picked out very destinctly in the reprise of the second movement in the Rondo.
The fourth movement was quite a lot of fun too, because I could pick up the pieces again and bring them together, not only concluding the piece, but also uniting the four parts, which are so different in many ways.
The lament (not really) sounds rather baroque, unfortunately it isn't that counterpunctual and rather too simplistic in some of the accompanying voices.
All that said, it was fun to do and isn't as bad as it might have been. I hope you enjoy it, even if it breaks with symphonic traditions and forms.
Best wishes, Jeanette

[matterisvoid]

That's so cool! Not too many people can say they've composed their own symphony!

[Largos]

Well done! Really nice work.

[troathscream]

Wow, sounds great.

[jeanette_c]

Thank you @matterisvoid , @Largos and @troathscream . I'm glad you enjoyed it.
A friend of mine, who is classically trained, apart from her apparent enjoyment, laughingly called it "a slap in the face of the habitual symphonic listener". I think she was referring to my constant disregard for classical forms.

[milo]

Congratulations on completing this magnum opus! I am not an expert on classical styles, so most of that went over my head. I just enjoyed listening.

[sunrat]

Truly excellent work, Jeanette! I've listened to many of your pieces and admired your playing and composition but have been underwhelmed by the synthesised sounds. By using the Sonatina Orchestra it has finally come home and shown the true potential.
Hard to believe you composed and performed this in 14 days, it sounds like a year's work.

Youtube was a bit clumsy in presenting this as 4 separate videos. I listened to the first movement and then autoplay followed with a Beethoven sonata, then the second movement was followed by a beautiful rendition of Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons on original instruments by Cynthia Freivogel & Voices of Music. I'm going to download the audio with youtube-dl and listen to it contiguously.

[psyocean]

Great work in traditional classical style!
Do you live in ancient city with palaces and cathedrals? When listening to music, the imagination drew just such images of old European cities from the times of Beethoven or Mozart...

[jeanette_c]

Thanks @milo and @sunrat for taking the time and for the kind feedback.
Sunrat, I will upload the symphony to my website in a few days, so perhaps that is a better place to grab the audio. I don't understand youtube though, I did create a playlist, but I couldn't find the URL nor could I find it by even searching for it in google. Well, it's always nice to hear a good version of Vivaldi's winter. So it's not all wrong.

[jeanette_c]

Great work in traditional classical style!
Thanks you @psyocean !
Do you live in ancient city with palaces and cathedrals?
...

Ha, I wish! My city had been there when Beethoven was alive, but it only sports one barely mentionable church. The rest is boring shading to quite ugly.
Thanks for the kind words!

[Rainmak3r]

Darn, you beat me to it, since I'm writing a symphony too I'm glad you got inspired to work on something like this: we do need more orchestral music out there!

The outcome is indeed impressive, so kudos for that: I didn't think SSO could sound that good either, which I guess is a testament to your orchestration skills (I never got it, or anything, to sound that good). On the movements, contrary to your description I liked the third the most, possibly exactly because it was less contrapunctual than the others: as a Late Romantic music buff, I like "intense" music more than "clever" one, which tends to tire me sooner (it's one of the reasons why the 3rd symphony by Rimsky-Korsakov is my least favourite of his, for instance). I would have expected the "lament" to be set before the "scherzo", but you did say you broke form in some parts, which is understandable from a creative perspective (there's no classical police! ) I definitely hear a lot of Mozart in the whole symphony overall, as it feels very "Classical period" oriented, with sprinkles of Baroque here and there.

I'm truly astonished you did all this in 14 days. I've been working on my symphony for about a year, now, and while the composition part was done relatively quickly, the arrangement is taking a lot of time (even though I have to say I work on it sparingly and am lacking the commitment it deserves). It was the same for the symphonic poems I shared, which I started working on as an excercise for that but turned out to be yet another distraction, and took a lot of time of their own. I really should spend more time on it, and not let obstacles I encounter become insurmountable ones: I originally wanted 2020 to be the year of my symphony, let's hope I'll manage to finish it by the end of 2021

[jeanette_c]

Hi @Rainmak3r ,
first of all thanks for the very detailed and apraising feedback!

Darn, you beat me to it, since I'm writing a symphony too
I am looking forward to that!
...
On the movements, contrary to your description I liked the third the most, possibly exactly because it was less contrapunctual than the others: as a Late Romantic music buff, I like "intense" music more than "clever" one,
Interesting, since the basic atmosphere and inspiration in that movement is the most baroque of all. I just didn't put in enough skill.
...
I would have expected the "lament" to be set before the "scherzo", but you did say you broke form in some parts, which is understandable from a creative perspective (there's no classical police! )
I must say that I don't listen to much 19th century music. I was starting out on the recipe of Beethoven's or Dvorak's 9th symphonies. While neither has a lament, both have a Scherzo. Admittedly Dvorak put it in third place. I am glad that there is no classical police here.
I definitely hear a lot of Mozart in the whole symphony overall, as it feels very "Classical period" oriented, with sprinkles of Baroque here and there.
Personally I have a well nurtured and cared for dislike of Mozart, but I won't take it amiss. Again, in the composition, the Scherzo most particularly, I was inspired by Beethoven. I am sure that I sprinkled baroque influences everywhere, since I am most familiar with that era, if any. I used counterpunctual measure - or at least some kind of complementary lines - to avoid the unison trap and achieve more of an "orchestral feel". though I slowly began to discover other means. Maybe I can explore these, when I finally come around to try the Virtual Player Orchestra. Again, thanks for pointing me to that. I had a play through a few of the sounds. Sometimes I liked the SSO sounds more, but the VPO definitely has the edge on articulations and consistency. That alone is worth a lot!

I'm truly astonished you did all this in 14 days.
Caveat: that was 14 working days, not necessarily spent consecutively. If so the piece would have been ready in early January. You could say it has taken about six weeks to two months in real time. Even though I didn't work on anything in the intervening time, a brain never sleeps and I'm sure a few things did come together for the fourth movement, so much less time was required, when I finally did sit down to record it. And I do know about distractions. Though mine kept me from even starting before.
...

I am really looking forward to hearing your symphony. A bonus of spending time with it is that the arrangement is more deliberate and elaborate.

[folderol]

I finally found time to sit down and listen to this properly - being snowed in helped!
This really is excellent, highly detailed work (although I can't claim to know anything about classical forms)
However, 14 days? That's damn fast! It usually takes me days to complete a 4 minute track - sometimes years. In fact my record from initial concept to final recording is 51 years!

[jeanette_c]

Many thanks @folderol. I appreciate that, especially knowing your - understandable - reservations against youtube.

[jeanette_c]

With a long delay here is the symphony to download and listen to in OGG and mp3 formats:
http://juliencoder.de/nama/symphony_of_ ... index.html
Enjoy!