On Recent Compositions

{Out of curiosity, is anyone out there a composer like me? If you are, make sure to comment or email, I'd love to be able to swap tips for good composition!}

I've been in the mood for composition recently.

A little while back I finished my arrangement of Bring Him Home, from Les Misérables,

I did a bunch of basic trumpet hymn transpositions,

I did an arrangement of the hymn Let There Be Peace On Earth for trumpet and trombone,

During my trip to Paris, I had a spark of inspiration, and as soon as I got home I began work on a composition for full concert band in the fantasy style, Fantasy on a Theme from Les Misérables. (Inspiration for this was kinda funny. I was listening to the musical on the plane ride home and got to the end of the show, which holds a very pretty musical phrase and this phrase combines with some of the most beautiful lyrics in the show: 'take my hand, and lead me to salvation / take my love, for love is everlasting / and remember the truth that once was spoken / to love another person is to see the face of god.' I was really listening to it that one time and I was immediately like 'I have to write a song based on this.')

And then, over the weekend I felt like doing a bit of composition so I sat down and thought 'A horn piece would be nice'. Thus, I wrote a short piece entitled Etude for French Horn.

As you can see, it's a rather short piece, only a little under thirty measures, but that's an etude for you. Rather short, plus the beginning parts are medium tempo, the middle is fast and the end is REEEEALLY slow, so it's a good small group piece. As you can see, it is written for three horn parts unaccompanied, and each part should really only be played by one person. The third part isn't too difficult, there's just one 16th note run, the second part is moderate and shouldn't be played by a beginner. The first part is fairly hard as it does go up quite high for a lot of the song and also has some really technical parts. Here's the recording...please comment with your thoughts!

I showed this to my friend who plays french horn today and he immediately took it and wanted to play it :)