Made with Dorico - Eyam

Here’s a software rendition of my composition ‘Eyam’, a piece for string orchestra that’s part of an 80-minute work called ‘Two Resolutions’ about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eyam on SoundCloud

I posted a draft version earlier this year, but it’s finally complete. Many thanks to @hrnbouma for helping me to get the score looking good. Any remaining deficiencies are down to me, as is the composition!

I haven’t done a score video as I actually find them quite distracting, but here’s the full score, which gives some background about the piece in the front matter.

Eyam Full Score (2024-10-28).pdf (317.2 KB)

The rendering was done with NP 4.5, BBCSO core and Spitfire Solo Strings.

All comments welcome.

4 Likes

Lovely music, and nice rendition. This being basically tonal music, the score would benefit from key signatures. Perhaps 3 or 4♯ at the start and 4♭ by the end. If you figure out what it’s doing tonally, that will help with the enharmonic spelling, which is rather messy. (Sequences such as bar 22 G♯-F♮-D♯ are very awkward to read.)

With all string instruments, there’s no difference between a “transposing” vs. “concert” score. Also the staff size is extremely small; you could still fit plenty of music on a page at a larger size, with less white space.

Thanks Mark, very helpful comments.

A follow up on the key sigs….

The first theme is made up of an 8 bar phrase that is played three times. It moves down a fourth each time (forgetting octave transpositions). I tried a 3 and 4-sharp signature but found that I still had a lot of accidentals because of this transposition . Likewise the piece moves into an Fm/Ab tonality in the second theme, but only for about 8 bars…

I’m interested to try your suggestion - do you still think the advantages would out-weigh the downsides?

I enjoyed the music very much!!

Thanks @gerardka!