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Hi, I will take in account to write right and left hand on the piano to make easier to play for the pianist next time. Thanks for your feedback!

As always thank you for your thoughtful review and comments. The more I review my older works - the more I see the weaknesses in them. It's quite fascinating since when the work is composed - it reflects my skill level at that moment in time. I am now going to seek a new mentor. One of the objectives I have in mind is to continue review older works - to seek out weakness and improve them. Just recently I listed once again to my orchestra composition "A Child's Walk" and heard aspects in the orchestration which I need to address anew.

The main theme was an idea I came up with the evening before I recorded myself, everything else including its variations and development was on the fly. However I use schemas and sequences I am already familiar with such as the rule of the octave, ponte and fonte and converting themes from major to minor is something I do for fun to well known themes and is easy enough to do on the fly. Also my right hand knows many ways to get up and down the keyboard using different scales, arpeggios and other patterns I've learnt. If I am at the piano and someone talks to me I always animate what they are saying with music to mimic their mood and tone for comic effect and I have found some good themes this way. I've also pissed a few people off doing this! My wife generally laughs and then laughs harder when I mimic her laugh with trills. Another thing I do is take apart any piece im learning and see how chords are used. Im learning Haydns minuets from ix:11 and these are full of schemas and classic chord progressions. I learnt what I think is a neopolitan 6th from ix:11 number 7 which I learned to play in a few keys and thats how I ended up creating the theme of this improvisation; my theme has a neo 6th. I think improvising is very much like speech, when we talk we are communicating in unique ways using patterns already well known from practice. Composing on paper in this analogy is like written speech. I do think there is a fundamental connection between music and speech.

I was very impressed with your 2nd movement. The fact that you can write such lovely and meaningful melody and harmony, that actually has direction and purpose shows you have what it takes to be a composer. I would have altered the Bass/Tuba line at some point as I thought it was too much for too long without variation. There are lots of small, but important details to attend to in your score for next time. One example would be using both E natural and F flat, at the same time, when of course they are the same note, but presenting them differently causes confusion. I also notice that even though you use lots of thirds in the melody line, when it comes to important chords at the end of phrases, the 3rd. note of the scale is often missing from the chord. For example, building a chord out of C and F, but with no A or A flat to round it out. Well Done.

Hi! I play clarinet, and sounds pretty good for play and breath. If you wanna blow the players head make many changes of tone, for us is pretty easy play in the same tone; the other tip is, the jumps, play scales is normal. but thirds, fourths, in descendent way, you know, is other level of difficulty. maybe that changes makes the piano more demanding too.

As a clarinetist (out of practice, but nonetheless still a clarinetist) I can say that this is a very easy piece. Breathing and phrasing go together, so any competent player would be able to insert breaths where appropriate. You do have to understand, though, that this would come at the expense of some quarter notes being played as eighths, some whole notes as dotted halves, etc. This is just part of playing a wind instrument and there is no need to stress over it. Think of it like bowing. You would not write in explicit bowing for a violin piece except where it was essential to the musical idea. Two other things: first, a clarinetist would immediately notice that you're not thinking about articulation. Every note is tongued - articulated the same way. That just isn't effective or characteristic on woodwinds in general in the style you're writing. At minimum you should think about the 16th notes. Slur two, tongue two? Slur three, tongue 1? Slur 8? It's all part of the way the instrument speaks and you shouldn't be ignoring it. Second, if I were playing this piece I would be annoyed at being totally cut out of the Adagio and having to stand there and do nothing to do for 2+ minutes.

Quite a fun piece! There are some spots that are difficult because of breathing but I think a Clarinetist playing this would find a way to sneak breaths in by shortening some of the notes and it wouldn't be a problem. Like the phrase starting at meas. 44 which is quite long the way you have it. The Clarinetist would probably breathe by shortening the last quarter note of meas. 49. Certainly playing the whole phrase up until meas. 61 beat 3 would be impossible without circular breathing. Same thing with the phrase that starts at meas. 99 in the recapitulation. Actually, another thing that's tricky is the piano part in the slow introductory section of the piece where the piano has three voices and the middle voice constantly has to switch between being played by the right and left hands in order to be possible. It would have been nice to notate that by splitting the middle voice between the treble and bass staves where appropriate. But that's just a nit pick and a possible way of making a convenience for the pianist. Thanks for sharing!