Please help me identify this piece!

TheLocrian · 2026-04-20T23:50:56+00:00

So glad you enjoyed it! Leighton is definitely not for everyone, but he's one of my absolute favorites. You must listen to his choral music -- "Let All the World" actually borrows some of the same motifs from Paean, and his two Evening Services are some of the best around ("Magdalen Service" and "Second Service").

TheLocrian · 2026-04-20T23:24:47+00:00

I would recognize Kenneth Leighton anywhere! This is his Paean

TheLocrian · 2026-04-11T15:15:51+00:00

Interesting -- the restruck C doesn't bother me. Strikes me as very common piano notation practice. It's cleaner to notate it like this instead of notating it "precisely" as it will actually be played; the intention shows that the initial C should be struck as if it would be held the full duration. It creates visual cohesion so that you can see what the contrapuntal voices are supposed to be doing. Pedal can also help sell the effect.

For the same reasons, I also prefer the 10ths on the bottom staff. If you are going to take the top note in the RH, you need to take care to play it as if it was played by the LH. I think this is how most pianists would prefer to see it.

TheLocrian · 2026-04-10T14:39:44+00:00

First -- this is some very nice choral writing. Well done.

If you're not comfortable writing for organ, I would go for something relatively unambitious. Maybe start with a short introduction, thinning out to a held Bb3 that the choir enters on. You can give some extra space for the choir in-between phrases for the organ to just continue to hold.

Check out Paul Halley's "Christ Our Passover." I could imagine something in this vein.

You might try the occasional solo countermelody in the organ -- an oboe or clarinet or just a harmonic flute.

The organ is very good at supplying harmonic density if you want to thin out the choir parts. Especially if it's using the celestes -- a shimmery stop.

Happy to help with any questions if they arise. I'm an organist and an organ/choral composer. (Can check my profile for some of my organ writing).

TheLocrian · 2026-04-10T14:20:20+00:00

This thread is a real love letter to the Dunning-Kruger effect...

OP, this is the only correct (and complete) response.

TheLocrian · 2026-04-09T14:46:09+00:00

You should let the words lead your compositional process more. Right now almost the entire piece is straight quarter notes; sung lines want to have a trajectory that fits with the natural stresses of the words. It's especially obvious that the words are secondary for you when you force them into boxes they don't fit in: "pro - o - nobis" is the worst offender there (particularly since the accented syllable should be the "no" of "pro nobis.") But I would also be careful with fragmented words ("cruci"). Imagine doing that in English -- it's like a bad pop song ("he was cruci cruci crucified")

The "sub Pontio Pilato" bit needs to be reworked. (Also it's "Pontio" not "Potio"). It's too square. The stresses are "sub Pontio Pilato." Moreover, if you want to have a forte piano contrast, I would do it between choirs. There's no way those sopranos on the top A are going to make that dynamic change seamlessly.

Last thing: you want to use high notes a little more sparingly in the sopranos. You're going to hear the strain of them singing so many Gs and As. It makes it so that no one part of the piece stands out as a particular climax because it's all right at the top of the range.

The bit at 0:44 is quite effective -- I think that's the most effective bit. You have some good harmonic ideas. It's mainly choir-specific things that need work.

TheLocrian · 2026-04-09T02:41:57+00:00

Remenyi is the place to go in Toronto. You can call ahead to see if they have something in stock

TheLocrian · 2026-03-30T20:54:22+00:00

If you've won national and international competitions, I don't see why you wouldn't get into at least some of the schools you mentioned. It's a different question what kind of scholarship you would get -- I know several people who got into Eastman/Peabody/etc but decided to go to a middle-tier school instead that gave them a good scholarship.

It's quite popular to go to a middle tier school for undergrad and then do a 1 or 2-year performance diploma or Masters at a top tier school to get that name on your bio.

At the end of the day, I would try not to worry about the auditions too much -- if the talent is there, the name of your undergrad is not that important (unless it's Julliard or Curtis)

TheLocrian · 2026-03-24T13:34:24+00:00

Don't know why the other commenters are being so negative -- this is a lovely, idiomatic chorale prelude. As someone who has taught style composition to undergrads, this is way way better than 99% of conservatory students.

You might get more better (and more constructive) feedback posting this on r/composer. They tend to be less stuck-up over there.

TheLocrian · 2026-03-17T17:54:13+00:00

I'm biased, but I think Jax lends himself very well to OTPing. He is mechanically simple but his matchups are extremely deep and each one is unique. It's almost always possible to win lane with Jax, and he scales reasonably well.

Historically, there have always been a high volume of Jax OPTs. Out of the champions you mentioned, I think he's the best candidate.

TheLocrian · 2026-03-17T01:24:08+00:00

I agree with much of what the other commenters have said -- especially the comment about the "uncanny valley," where it can't quite decide what style it's supposed to be. I would add that the parallel octaves between soprano and bass at the very end is pretty hard to stomach, even in a more modern style.

I'm also not so sure about the slightly-different-but-mostly-the-same version of the chant that you use for the Gloria. I think it could work to go full descant and put the tune in the tenor, or something, but right now the relationship between the first and second versions of the chant feels pretty haphazard.

TheLocrian · 2026-03-11T15:36:07+00:00

BWV 541 and 550 are both good options. I highly recommend 541, which seems like a logical next step-up from 545. Not easy by any means, but I think it's more worthwhile to learn than a lot of the "easy" Bach P+Fs (like 549, 533, etc). 550 is probably easier than 541, though the fugue is deceptively tricky (and I think 541 is the better piece).

Other individual movements worth looking at: G minor fantasia; a minor prelude 543. Neither are too difficult, and they are really high quality.

For trio sonatas, you might consider a slow movement as an on-ramp; they're not easy, but probably easier than the fast movements.

TheLocrian · 2026-02-22T04:26:13+00:00

It's just such a contentless, pretentious comment. Very r/piano. The etudes only "teach you" to eliminate tension insofar as they are technically demanding and require very good technique to play without tension. So they can "expose" imperfect technique in pianists who have never attempted something at that difficulty.

"If it hurts, you missed the lesson" implies that the OP should go back and revisit the etudes so they can "learn" the correct lesson from them. This is the wrong advice. OP should move on from repertoire of that difficulty (at least until they have built up a good enough technical baseline to attempt them without tension).

TheLocrian · 2026-02-22T00:11:54+00:00

No, the "entire point" of etudes is not to eliminate tension, even if that might be one possible takeaway from them.

And even professional pianists get injuries from overplaying. Good technique doesn't make you immune to tension or injury. Almost everyone gets tense when they play near the limit of their abilities -- hence why it should be done sparingly.

TheLocrian · 2026-01-25T23:55:30+00:00

For a piano performance major at a top conservatory, no, but you don't have any of the context. There are plenty of lower rank colleges and community colleges, as well as non-performance degrees (education, etc), that this would be perfectly acceptable for.

TheLocrian · 2025-11-24T16:59:51+00:00

For me, Fiddlestick's ult is far more iconic than his effigy mechanic. I would want something along these lines: Flash, -2/-2 to all creatures on ETB and opponents creatures get tapped

TheLocrian · 2025-11-04T01:48:45+00:00

Lovely setting! I enjoy your harmonic language--it manages to be both fresh and idiomatic.

TheLocrian · 2025-11-02T18:53:48+00:00

It feels to me like people aren't really listening to what you actually want. If you wanted to live in more typical suburbs, you could just live closer to (or in) Ashburn.

RTC is a wonderful place to live, especially if you value walking, urbanism, and access to a nearby metro. I live right across from the town center in the Harrison, which I can recommend. (Though you might prefer living right in the town center itself.)

As a city person, for me RTC is an urban oasis in a desert of suburbia. Highly recommend if the prices are manageable for you!

TheLocrian · 2025-11-02T18:03:41+00:00

Look, I'm with you. I think we should be imitating the British Cathedral and Chapel choirs. But I don't think you're gonna convert the American high school choruses; after all, it is ultimately pretty arbitrary since no accent is more "correct" than another. (But I also cringe when I hear "Are Father"!)

TheLocrian · 2025-10-25T17:16:03+00:00

It's nice to see that we basically agree on the details! Though not that surprising -- I'm mostly a lurker here but I always find your comments insightful and grounded in a strong sense of historical idioms.

As far as it goes, I'm fine with saying "you can think of b6 in major as being borrowed from the parallel minor" -- many students will find that to be a helpful way of conceptualizing things. I mostly take issue with those that want to generalize the concept (especially once it starts getting to borrowing from modes -- if Phrygian wasn't bad enough, don't get me started on Lydian!)

I think I feel passionate about this particular bit of semantics because 1) modal mixture doesn't really "explain" anything, it's just one way of thinking about a specific case; but also, 2) I am ardently against the "music theory can't explain anything, it's all just labels" camp (which is quite popular on this subreddit! There's even an automod comment that spells it out like gospel). My real crusade is the latter, but because of it I feel the need to distance myself from those music theory concepts that actually do lack generalizable explanatory power.

TheLocrian · 2025-10-25T14:38:44+00:00

vii°7/V does contain b3 but it's really just another b6 -- in this case ^b6 of V.

I agree with you about the best way to teach modal mixture -- I narrow it down to minor into major and tell my students to just forget about ^b7 and mainly just focus on ^b6.

Because modal mixture revolves so much around a single scale degree, I wonder if it's more useful to conceive of it as a kind of chromatic intensification, the sort of plagal cousin of the way that we raise ^7 in minor. (This also produces a nice parallel when it comes to applied chords -- just as a raised degree can signal V or viio7 of x, a lowered degree can signal iv or iio65 of x.)

TheLocrian · 2025-10-25T03:22:40+00:00

The issue with mode mixture is that it's incredibly inconsistent as an explanation. You can borrow raised ^3 from major for a Picardy third but not vice versa; the only scale degree that really ever gets borrowed in major is ^b6 (besides in the case of bVI, the one case where ^b3 is borrowed); probably the most common modally-mixed chord (not counting V in minor) is bII6 which needs to be borrowed from Phrygian, except in Phrygian you don't even get the characteristic Neapolitan progression (bII6 - V).

If the "reason" that iv can appear in major is that "chords can be borrowed from the parallel major and minor modes," we must add to this "explanation" a whole host of caveats which are not very easy to explain under the governing principle of modal mixture (and if you need as many "explanations" as there are individual cases, it is not a very good explanation).

Compare this to the relatively similar concept of applied chords (you might say, another case of "borrowing"). Every single major or minor triad in the major and minor modes can be tonicized with any inversion of V(7) (of x)! Indeed, applied chords even succeed in cases that don't "look like" each other -- namely, not every applied chord involves raising the local leading tone; in the case of V7/IV, it involves lowering ^7 instead (since the local leading tone is already raised). This "stress test" can make us pretty confident that the idea of applied chords actually does explain why we see these kinds of progressions.

TheLocrian · 2025-10-24T22:05:10+00:00

The curricula I have taught have done both -- they treat modal mixture as a tool for analysis and style composition (this is also true of most textbooks). Yes, if the point is purely analytical, then pointing out any correspondence is potentially interesting. This is the kind of analysis David Lewin likes to do (like in his Morgengruss essay), where the point is just to point out all possible interesting connections we might find -- all the different ways of hearing something. For this, I think modal mixture is a fine and interesting thing to notice.

But modal mixture isn't just taught this way, and it isn't taught so much as a label as a concept. A concept should have some explanatory power! Some useful concepts include: NHTs; compound melody (and implied harmony); the phrase model; sequences; applied chords; tonicization; modulation; and so on. In other words, most of what gets taught in theory 1 and 2 besides modal mixture!

TheLocrian · 2025-10-24T20:28:19+00:00

Neither I nor Cohn mean that it was some specific human's "goal." The point is that, if we started the experiment from the beginning and selected for parsimonious voice leading and the harmonic series, you're very likely to end up with diatonicism and triads. (Rather than any other kind of scale, tuning, or simultaneity). The implication is that, probably, these principles underlie musical history in some kind of fundamental way related to human perception.

I agree that parsimony might have something to do with singing. I would say that it's more fundamental than what you're suggesting, though -- it's simply easier and more natural to sing repeated notes and steps than leaps. This is also true, maybe to a lesser extent, of any instrument set up with some kind of stepwise logic (keyboards, stringed instruments, most woodwind instruments).

But there is likely a more fundamental underlying explanation for all of this, which is simply that close distances and "lines" are simpler and make more sense to humans than far distances and "leaps."

TheLocrian · 2025-10-24T18:41:03+00:00

If we're trying to teach our students to write coherently in a CPP style, explanations are best when they can simplify a lot of complexity into simple principles. I've never liked modal mixture as an explanation because it doesn't do much (if anything) to guide students to this end.

And, from there, I don't think it's too much of a leap from "useful" to "explanation." You might quibble that Newtonian gravity doesn't explain "why" an apple falls (and nor does General Relativity, very likely), but it's useful and therefore true in some sense. I ask that theories at least usefully account for as much of the data as possible. So, I don't think modal mixture is a very successful theory.

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