T. 21--A Great Accomplishment

I consider this piece a tremendous milestone in my development as a young composer. I wanted to write a piece for string orchestra and conduct the premiere performance at the annual senior honor’s concert held by my high school orchestra program. I started working on a piece that I could be proud of and that would send a message of encouragement and possibility to the audience. I worked on this for quite a while without a title. I just couldn’t think of one. At first I wanted to name it Victorious because I had learned that my first name comes from Greek words meaning “victorious people.” But I felt I could come up with a better title. Eventually I settled on A Great Accomplishment because not only is this composition and its premiere performance a tremendous accomplishment for me, to me the music sounds like what a great accomplishment would sound like. Though my composition skills have improved since then, I am still proud of this piece, because of what it means to me and the accomplishment I achieved on my senior year of high school.

I talked to my orchestra teacher, Mr. Larson, and he allowed me to distribute the music to the orchestra, rehearse the orchestra on my piece, and conduct the piece at the senior honor’s concert in May 2009. That concert was a tremendous highlight for me. Though I wish the orchestra hadn’t played quite so fast on a couple of parts, and one or two other areas were not quite in tune, the entire performance was memorable and one I could be proud of. I still have the recording of that piece from the concert, which I used for the video above.

 

This is perhaps the first piece I wrote in which I gave serious consideration for simple music theory, especially with regards to chord progressions. For this piece I combined several musical ideas I had created and heard at the time. The beginning is similar to the first few measures of Mist, the main melody that starts on measure nine is truly original. The faster, louder section in the middle is based on another melody I didn’t know what to do with yet, but I felt it was appropriate to include here. The last section is meant to represent me, Nick Totten, a. k. a “Victorious.” The rhythm that starts with the basses there represents my first name (“N-I-C-O---L-A-S”), and the rhythm in the violas and second violins represents my last name (“T-O-T---T-E-N”). The main melody represents the meaning of my first name (“V---I-C-T---O-R-I---O-U-S”). It all made sense in my head, and it sounded great to me.

The narrative of the entire piece is such that the first section is labeled, “With Pride,” which indicates the arrival of an idea or goal worth working on and developing. The second section, “With Conviction,” marks the period of hard work and dedication required to develop the idea or goal and to accomplish the task at hand. The final section, “Victoriously,” represents the achievement.