Like many of you, I also wanted to render a well-known score. I chose the overture to Parsifal, the opera by Richard Wagner (1813-1883). It is not the bombastic sound people usually associate with Wagner (actually, most of his work does not sound like that), but instead is a really reflective, introvert piece of about 10 minutes. The (3.5 hour!) opera is about the knight of the round table Parsifal and the quest for the Holy Grail, and the opera is seen as appropriate for Good Friday (so if Gary ever wants to have an Easter CD, this is my contribution). You can hear all motifs clearly in overture, and the sound ranges from 3 flutes at an intimate pp to full brass at a very stately ff.
You can find the full score and a piano/harmonium extract here. The last one is especially well suited to see the harmonic development for yourselves, because it is quite something. The score is quite complex, with bars full of 32nd in three parts simultaneously, up to 8 different clefs at the same page, triplets in 6/4 while the rest of the orchestra plays in 4/4, and not a single bar without an accidental, and the melodic lines get played by different combinations of instruments (e.g. violins plus clarinet, bassoon and english horn, or cello and horn), which are supposed to gell...
I rendered the whole thing in Logic Express and GPO4, which gave me some trouble, but it was worth it. It is scored for three flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and one bass clarinet and english horn, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, one bass trombone, one tuba, timpani, Violins I, II, Violas, Cellos and Basses (all divided at some point; pizzicato, con sordino, tremolo). I added compression, but I don't know if that was a good thing or not.
You can hear it at box.net (a 256kbs version of nearly 20Mb). I've also got a version at soundclick.com (but at 128kbs).
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