@agitato said:
Hi Jerry,
Let me start by saying that Ive generally been reluctant to listen to your works, since the mixing of electonic instruments with acoustic ones is not my personal favorite, and since I am more used to traditional orchestral instruments. Note that this has nothing to do with my respect for your experience, knoweldge and skill as a composer.
However, I recently listened through your entire Symphony no 10 1mvmt several times. I think I am finally getting your music. It is remarkable and its gigantic. The way you introduce the primary and secondary themes, the exposition, development and recapitulation.....its all there for the full glorious nearly 10 minutes. You are embedding non traditional instruments into the traditional symphonic structure and achieving fantastic results without sounding banal or repetitive. This is not easy to do, and takes the skill of a master composer.
This piece takes us through a beautiful journey, while within the tonal landscape, but with new orchestral textures.
Listening to it for the 5th time. Its kind of addictive!
Bravo!
Anand
Thanks for giving my music a chance, much appreciated. When I decided over 25 year ago I wanted to commit my life and time to writing symphonies, I had to define for myself what a symphony really is, at its core: A multi-timbral, multi-movement work for various families of instruments. This is a deliberately very broad interpretation but this definition takes into account the evolution of the symphony from pre-Mozartian days to post-Mahler. Once I did that, virtual orchestration began to make sense to me as an assimilation of the new with the old. The old: samples of acoustic instruments and their time-proven timbres, and the new: synth timbres that are non-duplicatable in the acoustic world. What I subtracted from my definition is the hall, the conductor, the players, the social, cultural and economic supports and of course musical style, which, as we all know, has changed dramatically over the past 400 years. Orchestration styles too, continue to change in both the acoustic symphony and the virtual one.
Glad you enjoyed the 1st movement!
Jerry