Les sons de l'été (musical composition)

[Quasar]

I think I mentioned this on the forums here a very long time ago but, I've been working on a piece of music off and on for almost 30 years called "Les sons de l'été" (which is French for "The Sounds of Summer"). It's a roughly sonata-form piece for a large, but sub-orchestral, chamber ensemble:

 

• Vibraphone soloist
• Flute soloist
• Piano
• Strings
• SATB chorus + boy soprano
• Extensive use of percussion (idiophone ensemble, timpani, aux, drum kit, etc)

 

It's finally relatively close to being finished after a huge push I've been doing on it since around 2018, at which time I also started dedicating a lot of time to sharpening up my skills and just getting more proficient at putting down the actual ideas I hear in my head. I've just been absorbing anything and everything to do with compositional theory and practice and I guess it paid off a bit (having MuseScore available helped too).

 

Below is my playlist of "complete" portions (I keep tweaking stuff endlessly due to perfectionism) on YouTube. You can read a bit more about the elaborate story it tells (any plain text you see in the score is meant to be projected or otherwise displayed/described to the audience along with the music) in each video and on the playlist page. I have been updating it regularly and I just refreshed all the videos to the newest score revisions last night.

 

 

[Rudolph]

Les sons de l'été that come out on a cold (at least, where I live) November day. XD

 

Joking aside, good work there!

[Lippeth]

I was passively absorbing the prelude while contemplating how a musical idea develops over the span of thirty years and then halfway through, starting just before the "darkly sardonic" section and continuing through to the resolution, the tension underneath the major key and the way it resolves hit me with a really beautiful and bittersweet feeling and so I let the whole playlist ride until the end while sitting here trying to articulate what I want to say about it. I don't consciously know much of anything about compositional theory or music theory in general but I'm thoroughly impressed and entertained by these arrangements; I can only imagine the amount of thought you've put into it and the decades of experiences and different head spaces to color and evolve each idea.

 

I'm really glad you've shared this, I plan to give the full story more than a glance as well because it comes across very classic, albeit a little hard to read the lyrics in 720p, but the description in each video adds to the vibe of each movement. I feel like saying something like "great job!" undersells it a bit, but I think it's really great!

[Quasar]

Added the newest part to be finished. This was actually one of the earliest parts I started work on back in 1994. I just put the last few touches on it this morning.