First Composition: Concerto No. 1

Here's the first thing that I ever wrote:  Concerto No. 1.  This was a class project for my 7th grade orchestra class.  My teacher asked us to write an 8 bar melody on your instrument to be played in front of the class.  I had recently seen the movie Amadeus, and it fascinated me that someone could do what they were doing in that movie:  writing music.  I decided instead of 8 bars, I would write a full length piece for the class.  What it ended up becoming is this work:


Concerto No. 1

1st Movement

2nd Movement

3rd Movement



In seventh grade, we had played an arrangement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.  The influence from this piece can be very clearly seen in the 1st movement, as well as somewhat in the the third.  I wasn't sure what a concerto was at this time, and so it ended up being more like the original Baroque concertos.  In fact, the original meaning of concerto comes from the latin conserere, meaning to join or bring together.  That's mostly what this and my early concertos are about:  bringing together an orchestra for a work.

I had read in an encyclopedia at home that conertos typically had three movements:  fast - slow - fast.  I observed this same pattern in the Brandenburg Concertos, of which I had a CD, and so that is the pattern I ended up following.

The second movement is the most unique of the three, as it uses elements and ideas from the Minimalist movement, which I did not learn about until many years later.  It repeats several different phrases again and again (listen especially to the cello part).

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