Leaderboard

So, both my professors had PhDs in western art history, one of them did his thesis on Mahler's symphonies and the other on the architecture of ancient Rome and aesthetic use of mathematical ratios. I also had, every week, 3 to 4 hours of music history seminars AND lectures, covering everything from Ars Antiqua to late 80s minimalism, and on top of all this we had hours and hours of analysis and theory, including but not limited to traditional species counterpoint and Riemann-style functional harmony. We also had two orchestration and instrumentation classes, where we did reductions and arrangements of a lot of different music, but the first year was almost entirely Bach - Mozart - Beethoven, then we moved on to Schumann and Brahms and Berlioz. Wow, so modern. On top of all this, I took 4 years of harpsichord along with the obligatory piano, so that included playing a lot of stuff from Louis Couperin to Schnittke. On the piano for my concert exam I played Janacek, Honegger and Schumann. My entire study (including the masters) lasted for 12 semesters. You have no idea about what I studied, because you never bother to actually ask. I assure you, I spend 80% of my time in my studies analyzing 18th and 19th century music, with the rest 20% being either really old music, or really new (including our own music from our composition class.) When I said we didn't get taught how to "write melodies," it's because we're up to our goddamn necks on traditional music analysis and performance to begin with, ON TOP OF needing to actually pass an entry exam to even start studying, which implied that you got some of those basics down at the very least. My portfolio going in were a lot of Bach-style instrumental counterpoint works, which is the reason I got accepted. And my composition teachers, one of them studied with Alberto Ginastera and later with Wolfgang Fortner and the other with Hans Zender. It's not like I didn't get exposed to modern and contemporary music, is that all these guys were historical and technical powerhouses. In fact, both my composition teachers were also responsible for the historical analysis and music literature courses, along with a bunch of other things. So, as a consequence, my education was -extremely- historically focused, and that was the same approach we took to the 20th and 21th century music (there was only ONE course in the entire conservatory that dealt exclusively with modern music and it was a seminar so everyone could learn a little about modern music for a semester. Shock and horror.) Needless to say, writing a style copy was not really something we focused on because it was assumed, due to the amount of stuff we were studying and doing, that any of us could do it with relative ease (I decided to put my beethoven and brahms analysis to use and that's why I wrote my first piano sonata which was a neo-romantic style thing. I did this during the last two semesters of my composition study.) Anyway. So before you mouth off stuff about me and my education, let's get the facts straight.

Hello all, hope you're all well. I haven't posted anything for quite some time but I kept working on my 2nd Piano Concerto and I'm happy to say that it's finally ready! It's dedicated to Ruben, the most wonderful cat who died this week from cancer but who gave us 10 great years, I love you Ruben. The Concerto is in 3 movements, I hope you'll find time to listen to them all, it's just over 21 minutes in all. I don't really like to impose my views or thoughts about I feel about it or what it might represent, I prefer to leave that up the individual but needless to say I'm very pleased with it. I hope you like it, and please feel free to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you think. The links are to my sound cloud page, hope they work ok. Love to you all Mark. https://soundcloud.com/user-729021187/piano-concerto-no2-in-bb-minor-1st-movt?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing https://soundcloud.com/user-729021187/piano-concerto-no2-in-bb-minor-2nd-movt?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing https://soundcloud.com/user-729021187/piano-concerto-no2-in-bb-minor-3rd-movt?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing Hello again, Just a quick addition. I know some of you like to see the score so I have uploaded them here. My process is quite messy, there are lots of mistakes, improperly divided notes and badly tied notes, wrongly spelled enharmonics etc., etc., plus there are various artifacts that are necessary for NotePerfomer to play it correctly. I just hope that anyone wishing to see the score can follow my intentions rather than what is sometimes actually written. If I thought there was ever any chance that someone might actually want to perform it, then I would take the time to produce a performance score, but I hope you will forgive my not taking the time to do it right now. Thanks again and I hope you enjoy it. Mark https://www.dropbox.com/s/vm7nud7lcyys8ym/Piano Concerto No.2 in Bb minor 1st Movt adjusted score. - Full Score.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/r6o298nfgb2cl3p/Piano Concerto No.2 in Bb minor 2nd Movt. adjusted score - Full Score.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ahoabrlurrhlpfg/Piano Concerto No.2 in Bb minor 3rd Movt. adjusted score - Full Score.pdf?dl=0 I made a mistake when exporting the scores and they came out nearly unreadable. I have since made much clearer copies should anyone wish to see them and the links above are now to the wholey more ledgable copies.

Hello guys, long time no see. I have been quite busy and I struggled a lot with this composition, but it is finally over and I came here to share it with all you. ^^ I hope you don't mind me copying the video descrition, I'm to tired to do a custom descrition here. This piece took so long to compose, around 45 hours. The main reason for that was that I got a mental block with it and I couldn't tie two sections of the work. I'm thankful to Carlos Barbé for enlightening me and making realize a couple of key things that I needed to sort out in order to do some progress. This is the last composition I will do for my "Dream Fantasies" set. After some consideration I decided to let the performer decide in what order to play the 3 pieces. I wanted to offer some freedom and let different musicians decide how they understood the whole thing. The piece is filled with lots of references to Nostalgia and A Sleepy Apology, so it can work as a nexus or a summary. This piece in particular is quite abstract, but its main theme is time. What it really means... Unfortunately I couldn't get a better performance because I finished this piece yesterday (31/01/2022-08/04/2022) and the most technically challenging fragment was the last thing I did. So I had vitually no time to properly practice the thing and also the piano where I played is super unbalanced (sometimes you play a key and it doesn't make a sound and in other instances it sounds too loud). But I think at least I got the right mood I had in mind (even though I calculated the piece should have a duriation of around 5' 40", so I played the slow section way too slow, sorry about that haha). Hopefully I will be able to record in my own piano in the near future. Oh, and I played this while having some kind of injury in my feft hand index finger, so yeah haha. And my hand hurted a bit after the loud section with 4ths, I don't know what I'm doing wrong to get injuries so easily. Thank you to everyone who supported me and showed interest. See you soon. 🙂 Also if anyone wants the score send me an email to ivanmusic1886@gmail.com . Although I'm still doing some modifications and even this recording has a detail that I changed in the score (not a big deal tho). Link:

SSC, Thank you so much for taking the time to listen and to write your very considered analysis, I really appreciate it. It's not an excuse, but my formal training consists of piano lessons from the age of 8 until 13. I reached grade 3 in those times, I'm 55 now. So much of what you suggest is probably (at the moment) outside of my capabilities. I did learn a lot during the writing of this concerto and I do agree with you that there is a somewhat rushed feeling to the whole thing. However, I am quite pleased that as you say, I actually got to finish such a thing. The score, I use sibelius and so the production of the score is simply a function of being able to reproduce and render the music. I know that it is probably very hard to read and follow and that as I said, I would take the time to creat a perfomance copy if I thought anyone would ever want to perform it, but I'm under no illusion that that would ever be the case. for me, just having the ability to entertain myself is such a way is worth a great deal to me and I post these things in the hope that someone might like them too, but I know my "style" is not at all contemporary and therefore not really of interest to most musicians of today. In the end, I just like to spend time doing what I can and I suppose with time, I may also develope more sophistication in the writing and orchestration as I hope that I will be able to carry on writing and creating something that pleases me so much and keeps me entertained. Once again, thank you very much for your time and your thoughts, I will ofcourse keep them in mind when I come to the next one. Kind regards Mark

First, congratulations on finishing something big like this. That's not easy and I think that deserves recognition. Second, please fix your score. I mean I know you said you don't want to bother unless someone wants to perform it, but honestly reading it was kind of hard and if you already went through the trouble of writing the whole thing, why not make it pretty to look at? Maybe you don't have time, fine, but as soon as you can you should do it. Third, as for the piece itself. I think that on a technical level your piano writing is alright and so is the orchestration, tho I would've preferred to see more mixed groups rather than just blocks, but it's I guess in that early 19th century style. As for the actual music, I think that it's very very dense and very very busy in most instances. Like, I'd rather the piece be longer if it meant that you got some time to breathe. This is immediately apparent in the first movement where there are large stretches where piano is basically carrying the whole thing with very little interaction with the orchestra, usually in the same rhythmic patterns. Like, you do break it up here and there, but I get the feeling that it's like the pianist is just rushing to get to the end and the end of the movement just cuts off. There's very little discernible form, too, which makes it sort of hard to concentrate. You do establish a sort of-kind of theme when the piano appears, but then you have a lot of development that isn't tied to anything, and it's all very chromatic and dense. The other movements feel very similar, too. It's hard to hear any kind of form other than the very basic introduction, and it's hard to know if the motives you keep repeating are important or not or if they're just random. I mean in the second movement you have the motives from the beginning intro that you keep repeating, but the problem is that it feels aimless without any marked point where something starts and something ends. Like, you do use full on cadences on occasion but are they something structural? I'd say sometimes, but rarely. The second movement also ends with what looks like a tiny reprise at the end, but again it feels like it suddenly cuts off. Why did the movement have to end there? Why not a minute sooner? Or a minute later? It's really sort of a shame because you have some really great moments and some of the textures are very nice, but that's the hard part of writing long-form, the longer you write the more the form itself takes center stage. Normally what composers did in the 19th century when it came to concertos like this is that they very much stuck to rather audible and sometimes simplified form ideas so that they could then use the orchestra more. Like, say, Brahms' first piano concerto, he full on repeats the beginning after the piano's introduction, and that's already like 4 minutes into the piece. But say you think Brahms' long-winded, how about Schumann's concerto? He establishes the theme very early and repeats it a few times for good measure, so we know what it is. And so on. Anyway, thanks for posting!

@AngelCityOutlaw: 'So the minority is understood to be the standard and the actual standard is treated as something that was the outlier and not really worth paying attention to. So most people just dismiss the real standard out of hand, assuming it's not worth their time. And that is what has happened.' This never happened in the conservatories or culture at large on music. Most people didn't even heard of Schönberg or anyone after him. They don't know Mozart is a lame composer compared to the ever superior composers of the 20th and 21th century including every little note I have written. Oh how I wish they knew! They would abandon that Mozart and that Bach immediately and listen only to ME ME ME. If you can have atonal music why still keep it tonal? Tonality is a terrible cage we should liberate ourselves from! Lets be liberated today! Be empowered! Like pagans! Now! Just joking 😛 but seriously, from which facts are you reasoning here? Schönberg and everyone after Schönberg isn't treated as better than Bach or Mozart. Not here in my country... Besides Schönberg isn't even a contemporary composer. Who still writes music like him?

Yeah, I have to stop you right there. Most people get into classical music through music education and I have never met a single person there, even among professionals, who is into serialism, even throughout the Boulez craze. Most people do not care about Williams or Holst either. It is neither leftists banning Mozart(this has never happened) nor stiff pretenders at Rieu's who are responsible for the public's lack of interest in classical music. You have to be on the spectrum to not get that classical music is an acquired taste. It is a niche.

Understand! Thanks for your comment! Ill try to work on that😀

Thank you dude. And you are right, I didn't really notice that detail, but I recorded that with my mic closer to the higher register. I did it to portray a brighter color but I think the bass does need more strength. I will do a recording of all the 3 pieces when I have the chance, but I don't know if I will be lucky enough to get a stereo recording on a good grand piano. What did the piece make you feel? Or what message does it convey to you? Aw, thank you so much! I really appreciate that. And indeed, I have been enjoying that chord voicing for 2 years already. I know it has a name in the jazz world but I completely forgot. 😕 I think it started with "K", if you know it or anyone who reads this thread and knows it let us know.