Pavanne - a score so big it cannot play back?

• Feb 25, 2011 - 23:24

Here we are folks. A bit out of a score so large that I cannot get it to play back!

I have never tried to write for an orchestra before (have written for jazz and pop), so please be patient with any irregularities you find. Needless to say, I did not know that there was pretty much a standard lineup for an orchestra, so when I set about this score I just wrote for the instruments I thought would sound right. The end result is something that almost no orchestra would look at (according to a friend of mine), and probably would not sound all that good anyway.

In order to overcome this difficulty I have also made a pdf version with (mainly) no instrument names, and made the score and all parts available (free) for anyone who wants to give it a try at http://www.poffle.co.uk/common/Pavanne score and texts.html so that any group of 14 or more musicians ought to be able to play it - a scratch orchestra! Parts can be doubled, tripled or more, and transpositions for Eb and Bb instruments are there. There are also suggestions about how to get that tricky rhythm to work. One day I might manage to hear it myself.

I wrote the original of this in the 1980s, and it has been performed in various forms over the years. I think the most recent one recorded was live at the 100 Club 2008. This can be found somewhere on the internet as a video but I cannot remember where. There is also an audio version at http://www.myspace.com/peckhamcalypso and probably a few more.

Attachment Size
100807pavanneorch.mscz 25.99 KB

Comments

It's playing fine for me on 0.9.6.3. What version of MuseScore are you using? Was it supposed to sould something like a funeral march? It's beautifully dreary!

In reply to by rj45

rj54 thanks for listening. I used 9.6.0 pre-release beta and never dared upgrade whilst I had so many hours of wortk there in case I lost it. In the light of what you have said and the fact that I have now put it there I shall try the latest Musescore, and maybe I shall hear this version for the first time.

Yes, it is indeed a funeral march, but I have seen a ballet dancer turn it into one of the most graceful movements one could imagine. (she was also very pretty).

'Beautifully dreary' sounds like a compliment, but might also be ' god, how dreary'. One never knows.....

It would have been nice to have been able to set the tempo to crotchet = 44bpm, but the slider does not seem to go down that far.

In reply to by rj45

Thank you rj45.

In that case...

On the ww.poffle.com site there are two recordings of actual people playing it - on (a) piano and (b) organ. Both are downloadable free. The organ one a friend of mine she said she wanted for her funeral.

And I think you will find the 14-part score with keychange also as a free download.

Yours

Poff

Thanks to both of you I got it to play back. It was full of surprises - most of them to do with the way Musescore interprets that which you have written.

But it also let me know if I have made any harmonic mistakes and allowed me to see that I need to be much more specific with things like pizzicato, maestozo, etc. and probably adjust instrument levels in the playback.

In the one I have put on www.poffle.com I have made a key-change towards the end, so I have probably uploaded an earlier version here than that which is intended for the Summerhill Project 2011 (the scratch orchestra version).

What a lovely program Musescore is.

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