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Hello! I decided to write a classical mini-little piano sonatina allegro movement! I didn't use any dice or try to make the music overly complicated or anything. I was going for just a pure easy-listening simplicity and ease of playing. It's not exactly sonata form as there's scarcely a development here. There are three themes though, which come back in the home key in the recapitulation. Let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy!

Hi everyone, I'm in the process of uploading as much of my music as I can on youtube, cuz what good does it do sitting around in my computer huh? Anyway, here's my second piano sonata as it was performed in 2016. It's divided into 3 movements and all three movements are following the typical sonata-form conventions to some degree or another. It took around 4 months to write the score and around 6 months in rehearsal time to get it performed to an acceptable degree. The third movement is specially challenging, but I think it sounds cool. Either way, have fun.

A very nice and lively piece that reflects the classical period. has many elements that will attract the listener. thanks for sharing

Oh my, that's embarrasing 😅 I wrote it like that for a change because I remembered seeing a minuet in 4/4. However, I found back the source, and it was just an exercise thingy in a random not very reputable book. Haha, so this is indeed no minuet, sorry for the confusion. I'll just change the name then, and come back later with an actual minuet with the right time signature 🙂 Thanks for passing by anyway

A very playful melody, enjoying it a lot! 😄

Thanks @bkho, @Papageno, @caters and @jejrekmek for your comments and for listening! It's been a while since I've played the Clementi sonatinas, but I guess some of that stuck in the back of my mind/my subconscious since I also did that here. I actually just thought I was using three themes with the third in E minor because in D major the ii chord is minor. Thank you! Actually, I just listened to the K 545 sonata after you mentioned it and I realized that it also recapitulates the first theme (in the 1st movement) at the subdominant level - just like I do in this sonatina! Thanks for your review!

The 3 against 4 rhythm beginning at measure 34 sounds so cool

That's actually very common for sonatinas, to have more of a bridging passage in minor than a true development. Sonatina in C by Clementi for example(the very famous sonatina for beginners) has a bridging passage in the first movement that is in C minor briefly instead of a true development. Even some full sonatas(namely the Moonlight Sonata and its first movement) have a similar structure to the typical sonatina form. And you certainly met your goal. It is easily listenable, simple, but not so simple that it becomes boring, and definitely playable(I'd say it's at about the same difficulty level as the K 545 sonata, though that's just from listening).

Or a Gavotte maybe? Gavottes are in 4/4 and have many Minuet-like characteristics. They typically have a half bar upbeat though, making beat 3 the accented beat. I definitely feel a beat 3 accent to this, add the upbeat and no questioning it being a Gavotte.

There is a market for everything, but my post wasn't about whether or not the market merely exists; it's about comparative demand. I'm not sure if your excerpt is referring to America, UK or the world, but let's go with the assumption for now it's UK According to statista, in 2019, there were 34 million concert goers with 5 million of that being at Festivals. https://www.statista.com/statistics/282032/music-concert-and-festival-attendance-in-the-uk-by-attendee-type/ It does not sort these by genre, but by googling what the most popular music festivals and concerts in the UK are...well, aside from BBC Proms, none of them seem to have orchestras. So I think it's a safe bet that the lion's share of those 34 million concert goers are going to popular genres and not piling into the ~54k classical/opera performances. Yep This goes back to what I've said many times on this (and others) site. A lot of orchestral music from the 20th Century (actually a bit before but whatever) doesn't appeal to people for the simple reason that it sucks; orchestral noise that is allegedly supposed to "mean" something and although musical quality is allegedly subjective, we're apparently supposed to be able to extract objective "meaning" from this piece even though even the academics who shill it can't agree on what it all "means'. Video game soundtracks have been credited with saving the symphony orchestra https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-video-games-are-saving-symphony-orchestras-and-filling-concert-halls/ The reason why is that a great deal of these scores are reminiscent of the Romantic Era. They are coherent and probably most importantly: Have an actual tune that people can remember and it's tonal. Not some weird, Schoenberg atonal, serialism nonsense. The biggest thing that the schools (the modernists) destroyed in the public conscious was the fact that the purpose of art is to be beautiful, culturally-affirmative and where things like music are concerned — entertaining. So now, a lot of people say they just don't "get" art; they've been successfully separated from their own culture (the ultimate goal of modernism) and apathetic toward it because the super-culture is now garbage and now, no one who is making anything still good is promoted. People like the Legend of Zelda theme for the same reason they like Mozart, Tchaikovsky or Beethoven's 5th: It sounds great and is fun to listen to. The melodies, the wind flourishes, the fanfares, etc. are exhilarating to listen to, memorable, nostalgic, and uplifting. Literally no one (sane) is sitting their analyzing it for some sort of propaganda message; they're just in awe of it and completely immersed. But outside of the game industry, composers still writing that kind of music don't really get a lot of promotion, like I said. Even if they do, and there are still some great new composers getting a platform at least at some of these concerts, the point remains that even if the music is great, most people would still take the music festival/rock concert over the string quartet.

As usual, not that I try to but it usually just shakes out this way, I'm gonna have the opinion that induces the most rage. So before we begin Okay let's do this. Firstly, I'm not actually certain that what you describe — composers and musicians not showing up to concerts — really matters. Actually, I would say it's often better if they don't. I, for one, don't actually make music for musicians to listen to; I just want normal people to like it and listen to it. But I find getting musicians to listen to new music is no problem. On these forums or whatever, I can usually expect to get a few dozen plays or something. On YouTube, some of my tracks wound up getting into the recommended feeds of normies and skyrocketed to tens of thousands of plays and hundreds of likes. I am always glad when musicians, especially ones much better than I am support what I do and like it, but it means a lot more to me when the average person, who just got off their boring, soul-crushing 9-5, stumbled upon my music, thought it was freaking awesome, and shared it with their friends because it brightened their day that much. Maybe, it even inspired them to get into composing themselves and that's even better. Then, a beginner reaches out to me via forums, email, IRL, whatever and is asking me for advice on their own stuff and how to do something. That's also humbling and good and it's actually gotten to be a bit too much this past year (which is why I'm making some online courses and prob gonna offer some skype lessons soon) too keep up with. All of that, in my opinion, is far better than musicians showing up. I played in rock bands and let me tell you something: The brutal reality of 99% of live music today falls under two categories • It totally sucks. Standards are very low. I can't tell you how many years it took before I could get to jam with a band that could actually play IN TIME with each other and would show up. I played alongside a lot of bands that just friggin' sucked, dude. They played way too loudly, too much distortion, singer couldn't sing, out of time, etc. Then, after the show they'd come up to us and be like "Hey, you guys were awesome, man!" and we'd say "Thank you" and then were always like waiting for us to say they were great too and looked disappointed when it didn't happen. It's like, well bro...I'm not gonna lie to your face and say you were amazing when you clearly bungled the song, don't know how to write a coherent piece, and couldn't even play in time with each other. If someone came up to us and said "Hey, you guys kinda sucked tonight", we were willing to be like "Yeah, it wasn't as good as it should have been". Most musicians don't have that kind of self-reflection, so what happened at virtually all of these shows, is that the "audience" was 100% "musicians". Just guys in bands that suck as bad as 9/10 of the other bands. It's a total echo chamber and "trophy-for-everyone" fest. People don't come because the bands aren't worth seeing. • Like with art galleries, there are many talented people out there. They don't get promoted though. If you have some sort of social justice message to sell, you can just literally tape a banana to a wall and they'll promote the crap out of it for purely political reasons. The guy who can actually sculpt, compose, paint, etc? Nope. Not interested. The industry is full of gatekeepers/politicians. This then harms the actually-good composers when they do get promoted, because most people just assume it's more modern-art garbage. Now I will say, I'm not entirely sure what it's like in local orchestral or chamber music "scenes" as per point 1, but I know it's true for point 2. The local orchestras near me almost never play anything by new composers and the few times they seemingly have, it was pretty much not even advertised so I never would've known about it anyway. Last point • You have a niche category of music Most people today, including musicians, outside of a film/game context, do not have any interest in orchestral music. Even I can honestly say I don't feel compelled to go watch a string quartet + winds duo. People want to have fun at concerts as much as they do hear the music. People want to dance, they want lights, they stage antics and performance, they want the social aspects of it as well as the music. Sitting silently in a cathedral or hall to listen to a cellist saw away might sound nice and have a nice atmosphere to it, but it's just not something most people are going to make an afternoon/evening out of, or certainly pay for, when there are (at least pre-2020) so many other more-fun things they can be doing. Historically, the orchestra was generally the music of rich people and to a lesser extent, churches. For the peasants, the unwashed masses, the normal people — the fiddler on the street or at your spring festival and drums is what they know as music and they'd have much rather been doing that than going to sit quietly in church and listen to a choir sing ANY piece old or new. In other words? Musicians aren't showing up to local concerts? Good. &*#@ 'em. If it's mostly musicians showing up, it means that the music is pretty bad. If you have like 40 normal people who just want to listen to music showing up to an orchestral/chamber music concert in 2021? You're doing very well, I'd say.

It's hard to speak to this without having been on the scene to see how things were marketed, but I work in the art world as well as the music world, and starting anything is always a real struggle. You have to expect it to take 3, 5, 10 years for an annual event to really take off. You have to plan to spend money on advertising and venue, and paying staff to organize everything and not let your heart break when the first few years are really sparsely attended. I just sold work at my town's brand new summer arts festival last weekend. They made a huge effort to make it worth my while to be there, because it was the first year they've tried to do this, and they knew that attendance wouldn't be great, so they provided tents and chairs to save all the artists having to set up their own, and there was free parking for artists and attendees all day, and volunteers to help you set up and pack up and to watch your work while you ran to the bathroom... and instead of charging artists a booth fee for the privilege of selling our work, the city actually paid a stipend to thank us for taking a gamble on a brand new event when we could have been somewhere else at an established event making money. So you may not have actually had a "musicians don't support new music" problem. You may have had a "this is a new event" problem. The fact that three clarinetists came from the school where someone just did a masterclass is typical. You need to find ways to create interpersonal connections like that to get butts in seats for any event, but particularly for a brand new event. Give each participating musician a fistful of free tickets to give away. Ask them what else is on their schedule for the weeks and months before the event and YOU go to THEIR events, (and deputize your planning committee members to do the same) just so you can stand up in the back of the room when the presenter asks if there are any questions and say that you just love clarinetist x, and wanted to be sure that everyone knows they will be performing again at New Music Fest next month and you'll be in the lobby with tickets later. Talk to the music departments at the surrounding universities and ask if they would like to assign extra credit points to any student who attends your event. Offer to set up a car-pool to and from the event. And remember that working musicians have lots of events to go to, because they are participating in events. I don't go to a lot of concerts because I'm busy being in the concert. I don't go to a lot of art shows because I'm busy being in the art shows. My weekends and evenings are booked between events I'm participating in and rehearsals. I have... no... time. Don't expect musicians to be the bulk of your ticket sales. You need to market your event to the general public. Pop music constantly churns out new songs and people are very excited about it. Pop music also has a massive well-tested marketing engine behind it. It's all marketing.

I think this is more the fault of a change in venue than in contemporary composers not being interested in their fellow composers work. With readily available and decently high quality renditions being produced by many composers, the need for concertizing has fallen to record lows. The only reason to get something performed live is to record it and preserve that performance for posterity. People don't see as much need to go out and listen to new compositions for these reasons. Plus they have much more of a choice over what they want to hear - the whole internet is at our fingertips and includes the very new music you're claiming is only available through new music concerts.

This is probably a very late comment, but I just wanted to say that I listened to this sonata in full for the first time just now, and I love it! It's so colorful and positive, and so well-proportioned within itself. Nothing superfluous or pompous, just plain fun. Awesome! 😄

Austenite, I found the Sonata you posted in October 2018 by searching for ideas to embark into composing the first movement of a symphony. It is great, with fantastic bits of inspiration. The first and second movements have a great "Latin" early XX century flavor. The first one reminds me of the 2/2 Venezuelan "Joropos". The second one has that great Tango flavor that evolves without losing its flavor, and it seems to be calling for a wilder development to break molds. The third one reminds me of a Mazurka, and it is quite contrasting. My favorites are 3 and 1. 3 has so much potential for orchestration, I can almost hear already a very interesting series of alternating sections growing into "tuttis". ¡Pura Vida!