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  • Works With Few Reviews

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    • A musical joke. This is a revision where pizzicato trills were omitted.
    • Hallo @TristanTheTristan! Even your Sonatina has a length of a Sonata, I think it was wise to call it „Sonatina“ only, due to its youthful spirit and its refrain from the drama and heaviness of a „full-fledged“ sonata. So it is a cheerful, enjoying piece at all! However, what refuses me to count it as a piece that I would enjoy to put in my playing list is its hyperactivity expressed by the much to fast and repeating passages with ornamentations (trills, tremolos etc.) which heavily remind me on your signature „TristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristan ….“. I can therefore only emphasize @PeterthePapercomPoser' questions about playability for a human performer and would love to hear the piece as it would be interpreted by a real pianist, whether it's a live recording or a recording from a MIDI file. In the latter case, however, more sensitivity to the technical abilities of a human pianist and their enormous nuances in articulation, dynamics, tempo, etc. would be required.
    • I've attached below the opening 32 bars of a movement for strings, chorus, and continuo in the late Baroque style. The text is taken from Goethe's Einsamkeit; the full text and a sample translation can be found at the end. The form of the chorus will probably end up being rondo-like: A B A' C A. Section A here refers to the opening 32 bars, and A' is A in the dominant key. Section B will deal with the next two lines of text, and likewise with C. I'm interested in how you might proceed with B & C. What kind of textures? What material from A do you want to use? How would B and C relate to each other? Einsamkeit Die ihr Felsen und Bäume bewohnt, o heilsame Nymphen, Gebet Jeglichem gern, was er im stillen begehrt! Schaffet dem Traurigen Trost, dem Zweifelhaften Belehrung, Und dem Liebenden gönnt, daß ihm begegne sein Glück. Denn euch gaben die Götter, was sie den Menschen versagten, Jeglichem, der euch vertraut, hilfreich und tröstlich zu sein. You who dwell in rocks and trees, o salutary nymphs, grant gladly to each what he silently desires! Create solace for the grieving, give instruction to the uncertain, and to the lover grant that he might meet happiness. For the gods gave you what they denied to men: to be a comfort and an aid to all who trust you.
    • It's a huge improvement from the previous piece. The countersubject you've written is very melodious, and you've exploited its scalar nature and its rhythm very well for the rest of the piece. The harmony in your counterpoint is very apparent and well-constructed too: the first bar outlines descending thirds, and the second bar is a dominant chord. The issues regarding accented 8ves are also no longer there. You can refine your countersubject slightly though. All of the semiquavers in bar 4 should be raised by 1 pitch. This will both highlight the underlying dominant harmony, and also lead to the E in the following bar more smoothly. With this change, your solution will be perfectly acceptable, but a slightly more musically "interesting" solution will be to turn the beginning of bars 3 and 4 into 4-3 suspensions. Then I'd raise the following points about the rest of your piece: As mentioned before, your piece needs strong cadences to serve as musical punctuations. You need a V - i (or I) in the tonic key at the end. You also preferably need another in a different key somewhere else. The tonal scheme of your work is perfectly sensible: tonic - dominant - relative - tonic, and so a second V - i at the end of either the dominant or relative section is desirable. A third or fourth strong cadence may also be added at your discretion. Your subject + countersubject together is invertible (in the sense of exchanging bass with soprano and so on) and so you should invert it! Every opportunity you've had (bars 7, 13, 19) you've presented us with a modified version of the subject and countersubject instead. You are allowed to do these pitch modifications (and I indeed like them), but given you have presented the theme consistently throughout the work as soprano -> bass pairs, you should also present these modified themes as pairs. Utilising these modified pitches as new motifs in your episodes would also be desirable. Whilst you will find episodes like these (i.e. repetition of one passage, with slight modifications) in the oeuvre, far more commonly you will see different episodes being constructed completely differently. They have different lengths, and are based on different harmonic progressions. Melodically they generally still play from the pool of the motivic material in the theme, but the exact details vary from episode to episode. The reason why is not because repetition is bad - repetition is good if done sensibly! But the journey you take to get from the tonic to the dominant must clearly be different from the journey from the dominant to the relative, so a different approach is needed each time. Writing different episodes will also allow you to place the much-needed cadences at will. When you can employ this repetition technique however, is when your starting and ending keys are separated by the same interval. In your case, this means you can reuse your episode between the dominant - relative (v to III) as an episode between the relative - tonic (III - i). If the subdominant was part of your tonal scheme as well then it means you can reuse a tonic - dominant (i - v) episode as a subdominant - tonic (iv - i) episode.
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