As I posted on the Musescore page, my first transcription in Musescore was Dvorak’s String Sextet (the Dumka): a piece and a composer I have always found bewitching. This serenade is my humble scribblings attempting to emulate this great artist, particularly the works I was familiar with: the chamber music.

Dvorak’s background was bohemian: he was a Czech composer whose music was strongly influenced by folk music of that region, a bit like Smetana before him. This little effort is a mere shadow of that giant’s creative ability and prodigious achievements as I have no such influencing factors.

Technology has made available to us an entire universe of music genres, which for anyone aspiring to create original work is “creative noise”, like light pollution near cities makes appreciation of constellations in the night sky difficult. People have radios on at work, at home and in the car – radios which for the most part emit thoroughly unimaginative “pablum” at best, or sounds that qualify more as organised noise, or perhaps more kindly, a form of poetry (more or less spoken word) with a drum-beat track. Actual harmonic works – and even those rare birds of dissonance – have been shouted down by the strident, overpowering rhythms and reverberations of this they call “music”: it is no longer listened to, but just exists as a background atmosphere most individuals are barely aware of. Interestingly, the absence of that sound – silence – is threatening: the sound needs to be there or the individual feels a strange discomfiture, like something isn’t quite right.

It is in this challenging backdrop I wrote this Serenade in D minor, my sixth sketch (I do seek solitude and quiet to write, and yes, it can still be found, with an effort). Serenade is a fairly simple piece, with a recurring theme in the strings. Hope you enjoy – it’s only four minutes long: