ee eeee eee eeeeeaaaaeee eeeeeeiiiaaaa uuuuuuuuuueeeee eeeiiiiuuuuuaaaa ...

(sorry, no tongue anymore [:P] )

Ok, mathis, didn't mean to completely vowel you. Here are three barbs you may use: * * *

OK, the mix is already much much better, considering your possibilities. Although it has lost its mellotron weirdness quite a lot. Which I personally find a pity. But I guess you intend another result.
Please tell something about your compositional intentions. I would like to know more about your approaches and goals before I can comment on the music itself.
1:56 is still out of tune.

You have been doing much helpful listening, mathis, for me and others. Thank you. [edit] and thanks for the additional tuning pointer, I've been holding off addressing the brass, where this is, until deciding on some new samples [/edit]

This is concert music, music for conventional orchestra. The tuning issues have been brewing in my music for quite some time, resulting from some live performances where players tuned OUT of equal temperament but failed to tune INTO any good relationship to the music. So in this score and other recent ones, I'm offering guidance to how to play every note -- every note is marked with an intonation indication. A surprising result of this is that it affects the counterpoint of the music: if a note is to be tuned flat in one harmonic situation, the melodic interval from that note to the next may not be an out-of-tune perfect interval, nor an un-natural third or sixth, with a melodic interval other than the pure tuning. Just the same way that paying attention to parallel and direct fifths, and doubling rules for notes in a triad, affect the outcome of the music.

The mock-up is purely to have a good demo to send conductors who might be interested in the music. I am spending lots and lots and lots of time on this to determine if it is possible! The alternative is to use a demo from an amateur orchestra (not so good) or a paid for-hire orchestra (not predictably a lot better, and expensive). So far, the New York Philharmonic hasn't recorded for me.

The title for this piece seems to be becoming "Holy Day Overture", with it's three secular-semi-religious sections, "The Brooding God" (judaism), "The Happy Gods" (paganism) and "The Compassionate God" (christianity).

I would love seeing how you notate your off-tempered tuning. How do the indications look like? Can you make a scan of some detail?

Hm, the reason why I asked was more because I´m really lost how to hear your composition. It is still very strange with all the baroque elements which sound extremely static and coarse on your midi-playback. And then added are these very dramatic percussion elements like Tam-Tam or cymbal swells which are suddenly there but disappear straight away again leaving a kind of "what was that?" in my face.
It´s actually very difficult for me to imagine how this would sound with a real orchestra, I don´t know why. So I just hear the Midi and take it as is, my ear doesn´t make the jump of imagining the "real thing". So I don´t really know what to say about it.
Maybe talk about your non-musical references, the religious content. What is your connection between that and the music?

Thinking about playing a score with intonation indications above every note I think I would play quite inspontanious and uptight since I would be totally concentrated on the tuning. And I would loose the ear for the phrase since I would *only* hear vertical. Is that an effect you intend?

Mathis, for you I've begun to put together a new website. It is very incomplete still, and many links don't yet work -- but here it is: www.guglielmomusic.com

On it is a link to the 'holy day overture' , yet another and newer recording, and a score sample, miniature score format, of the first few pages .

Direct link to the Holy Day score is here, with a pdf link in the html page.

Your observations about playing might be very true -- hopefully, you would play disregarding the intonation markings until you felt unsure where you were in the tonality, then you'd glance at the markings and get re-assurance how your part should fit into the texture. What instrument do you play, anyway?

I'd like to listen to this but have had trouble with the previously posted links. Do you have a straight mp3 for downloading directly from your site?

William, temporarily it is at http://www.guglielmomusic.com/gugliel+holyday_part.mp3

Let me know if this link gives trouble.

@gugliel said:

What instrument do you play, anyway?

Please, don´t laugh now.... You know, I play an instrument which is basically NEVER in tune... the guitar. [:O]ops:
But occasionally I also play the Kazoo, so there tuning is relevant. [:D]

Thanks for preparing the score excerpts. Aren´t string players play quite pure tonic related intervals automatically?

Do you play VSL sampled kazoo, or live, mathis?

String players play beautifully in tune without any intonation markings when they are very good players; when they know the music very well; when there is a traditional harmonic environment; and when they pay attention.

As a living composer writing for live performance by traditional performers, I don't always get even one of the above, and have never gotten all of the above in a live performance. So the markings and my recent music, too, in some way take up the thread of music history from BEFORE the baroque period. JS Bach, his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, by their investigations into keyboard-oriented temperaments, gave away a great deal of musical potential when they froze intonation. I'm trying to communicate with the players through the paper and the ink markings, and persuade them to get invested in the sounds quickly, without waiting for me to die and molder and be re-discovered.

It's quite possible that I'm leading the way into a dead end, but just maybe there is a new school of music arising and I'm a prophet!! Disciples, sign up here.