Leaderboard

Hi all. This is a little orchestral piece I wrote some months ago, now it has been improved (or I think so). After Ligeti, it develops some techniques such as mass sonority and micropolyphony.

Back to the galant style, I wrote this Aria using only three patterns: the Romanesca, the Fenaroli... and one that is unpublished because I have "extracted" it myself from a progression that I like very much, and that I have called Le Temps. I also use a familiar theme (I think so). Concert pitch score.

This is a piece I recently wrote. I was inspired by looking upon so many problems that are going on in the world, as well as being inspired by problems going on in my own personal life.

One Word: Wow. I'm speechless at how good this is.

Interesting. The small limitation, however, in my opinion, is that piano writing becomes a little dense to the orchestra. We would almost want a moment when the texture is less loaded, but I do not doubt the excellence of Adler's references.

Really beautiful. Of course we are projected into an earlier musical era, but I don't dislike it. As has been said, what is also very striking is the rage of your interpretation. You keep an extreme tension throughout this diabolical movement. It's an absolute cry of anger. I even find that the harshness of the recording is quite adequate with the subject and that a beautiful sound recording would not necessarily have been better to make your torment. Bravo.

Again, always great to hear actual performances of compositions. Reminds me of Alkan's Rondo Toccata from, his Op. 76 which similarly is a very fast movement where both hands play almost identical notes but two octaves apart.

lol with my piano technique I would only be able to barely attempt this movement if at all. Fortunately a lot of unisons. Unfortunately it’s a moto perpetuo. Unfortunately there are non-unison places. Actually for example if someone were to modify what I wrote to sound better not at the expense of losing the music’s original soul, I’m all for it. On the topic of subconscious cyclical elements among movements, I think it occurs more often than we’d think if someone were to really analyse. I mean how else would the famed composers write tonloads of music and publish them back to back all the time? Anyway enough verbosity, I have heard Chopin’s finale being described as atonal. I don’t complete agree but I suppose that youtube video has a way of explaining it. This movement, however, very much relies on the tonality to deliver the urgency sense.

So would you consider that last mvmt the hardest? Because rn I’m also attempt my own work without much suscess… lol

LOL, if I could read, then I would have seen your opening post says "5 movements" 🤣 sadly, I can only count to four! I look forward to hearing the next movement when it's available!

Hey @SergeOfArniVillage, Thanks for your review! Yup the music is real nasty. I don't know the 2015 Henry wrote such things this difficult LoL. But luckily it's playable and it does have some passion and urgency in the music. Actually the 1st Piano Sonata of mine (this is the second one) is named after Beethoven's "{Pastoral)! Here it's calm and serene so maybe you think it's pastoral too. Haha this is not the final movement of the sonata, as there will be a final 5th movement I've yet to practice and record. For me I conversely wanted to present that restraint feeling, and I think it speaks its mind. For me music must speak out of themselves, that's for sure, but the way to speak it out can be different. Just like in drama speaking in iambic pentameter will be a beautiful way to speak out the thoughts of the characters, but so is the free verse. The restrained feeling is what I want to express here as it's suppressed in the first three movements, and when it shows its real character here in the fourth movement it's like this. I will say I'm brutally honest in this one as I myself am a restrained person, and I was shocked to finish this movement when I was composing under a very happy and comfortable environment and period of my life. I hope this restrained feeling of C# minor can be solved in the final 5th movement! I'm sure I'll have the whole piece ends in a more complete sense if you know there's a fifth movement haha! Thanks so much for your advice though since it IS one of my problem that sometimes I cannot express myself in my music, even though I don't think this movement is an example of it! Kind Regards, Henry

The chord progression themselves are interesting, since here you are using the circle of fifth which is good, but it seems more like a piano accompaniment rather than a SATB for four independent voices! I as a bass player hate singing the root of a chord all the time as it's boring. For me you can change some of the chords to first and second inversions. You can have it more moving by feeling the gaps between the root position of the chords too, e.g. b.6 from G to C you can have G-Ab-Bb-C instead, and the dissonance adds more colour to the music for me. Henry

Hi! I was amazedby this piece when I first heard it! I don't know of you want a 'old classical' piece or a 'nee classical' style (i know the choose of words is weird but i don't have enough lexicon hahaha), some parts and chords treatment aren't accepted by conservatories but are accepted by modern musical genres. For example: there are several parallel fifths, parallel octaves, and sometimes you reach a fifth interval by parallel motion, etc ... ( it has a bit of romanticism style, that's why i found strange some of the treatments) Yes! It says a lot, but it is nos 'academically correct', a fermata or a caesura would have the same impact! Also, in the allegro part, I love the melodic structure (4+5), it doesn't feel unnatural, that means you've done it very well 😅 - b45 section is very much enjoyable! -b57, using repetition bars for just one bar is not idiomatic

Hi @SergeOfArniVillage, I love this piece! The pathos and passions are so authentic, even though this is just a computer rendition. It really shows that what you are facing in your own life, which is what I am sorry about. I love the opening section! The chord progression is great. I love all those suspensions and the augmented chords. I like those 2 beat empty bars too! I do that myself and it gives a feeling or unspeakable suffering. For me the Allegro section reminds me Beethoven's pathetique sonata: the chord progression, sentence structure, texture. But your harmonic language is more complex. B.49 is the further development of the b.33 theme in triplets. B.60-61 reminds me of Rach texture. I like your return to the opening section in b.65-74, and again the structure reminds me of the Pathetique Sonata. In b.76 you start a new theme, and b.92-102 reminds me the texture of Sakamoto Ryūichi and I love the texture very much. Then the Beethovanian portion returns and the texture is becoming thicker and thicker. B.126-127 reminds me the XXVIII variation of Bee's Diabelli Variation. The ending outburst is very powerful and I absolutely like this, perhaps extending the ending chord a bit longer will be even better! This is real emotional music. Congrats on this and hopefully by writing this you can find some relieve! Thanks for sharing and welcome back to YC! Henry

I listened to the whole sonata just now on YT. I really loved it from start to finish, and the main reason why I did was because there's something really un-pretentious and "real" about your way of composing. I felt like I was just listening to you play in your living room, and that's a wonderful vibe to be able to give. I may come back and speak more about what I heard, but some things I want to say off the bat regardless: 1) Wonderful playing! 2nd movement is downright nasty. 2) 1st movement reminds me a great deal of something Beethoven would write when in one of his "pastoral" moods. 3) I feel like you have a double-edged sword in your writing, at least based on this whole sonata. You show restraint and maturity in your writing, and that's so important. But the 4th movement is built up and alluded to right from the middle of the 1st movement, as clearly the C#m section is begging for development, and it works perfectly for a final movement. But you show so much restraint, that I think the 4th movement never really gets its opportunity to speak its mind. Something is bubbling under the surface, but never comes to the fore, and so something important is going unsaid as the piece ends. If you can't stand the thought of touching anything in the 4th movement, I understand, but it's just something to keep in mind in the future. Sometimes, the music just needs to be unafraid and courageous, and "speak its mind". You may be outright shocked at what lies within your own self if you allow that "brutal honesty" to manifest itself. Thanks for sharing, this is a real work of art!

Hey @GospelPiano12, For me to begin the first chord with a iii6 (or I64 without a tonic) seems less firm. Maybe just a V or V7 chord will be great? I love your progression in b.5-8! There's parallel octaves but obviously they don't affect much since this is not in a strict style. Thanks for sharing! Henry

I'm a big fan of 'old' movies, I find very enjoyable the whole ost of barry Lyndon, but it is all classical pieces 😅 Also I love alice in wonderland's music ( A more modern ost would be from Hunter x Hunter (Yes, it is inspired by prokofiev) And another one:

@PeterthePapercomPoser I'm glad you like it. Le Temps!! wonderful and novel progression... It was created by Leo Ferré (1916-1993), a magnificent French singer-songwriter. The song is called "Avec le temps". This is the original version (there is one with video of him but here is the English translation). But I recommend Celin Dion's version, tribute to her husband... Touching. OF COURSE, THEY BOTH DID IT WONDERFULLY. MY PIECE IS JUST A SHADOW OF THEIRS....

I love how receptive this community is when it comes to avant garde music; this is really new to me, but I'm all for it! I've also been really buoyed by this optimism, and have just come around again to say thank you to everyone who's listened to my piece!

Yet another improv, i worry im boring people with these! I'll stop doing it soon, I.promise! I've started writing down my compositions/improvs again. I have a couple of minuets I'll upload soon, I just get so distracted when I sit at the piano. I've composed, via improv, a piano sonata in C major, I was thinking of the third movement when I improvised this. It reminds me of Haydn, I want the third movement to be light hearted and playful because the second movement I composed is in c minor and I use every trick up my sleeve to pull on the heart strings. I wish I recorded myself playing it, I worry my memory of it could get corrupted because it has more complex counterpoint. The first movement is like a piano concerto and is full of flashy runs in both hands. It has a Mozartian air and I use some of his signature moves but it has enough of me in it so it's not a cringey pastiche. Well I hope not! The improv here is a 'first run' so it's full of hesitation and mistakes but it made me smile when I listened back to it so I thought I'd upload it, I've been quiet for a few days so why not. Cuckoo!

Thank you very much that guy. I have no self confidence in music because I've not studied it like others have and I learnt to play and compose by myself through my ears if that makes sense. I just don't know if I'm creating noise or music sometimes. Up until I was 11 years old I never listened to classical music. My only exposure to it was through adverts on TV or TV shows and movies. Then one afternoon my elder sister of 2 years came into my room and gave me a magazine. It was a first edition of a new magazine that had just come out about composers and their music with a cassette tape of some of their work. This was back in 1992. She didn't want it and only bought it on a whim because of the price. It was about Tchaikovsky and featured some of his ballet work and his piano or violin concerto, I can't remember. I found the music captivating, I never knew music could make me feel such emotions and create such vivid pictures and tell stories. Before that I was into Michael Jackson and Bryan Adams. I enjoyed reading about his life and learning about the history of his time. Then the second edition came out and I bought it with my pocket money and a switched turned in my head. It was about Mozart and had Eine Kleine Nacht music on one side and his Jupiter Symphony on the other. OMFG! My mind blew! I can't put to words how it made me feel, it was like a landscape of a foreign world. The night music was amazing to my ears but the Jupiter symphony just pulled me away into my minds eye. The minuet for example created pictures of Spitfires chasing Messerschimtts, you know how they turn and dive. Might seem odd considering it's a minuet but to a boy of 11 the counterpoint triggered those images. Everyday after school I would go to my room and listen and unwind. I wore the tape out! I ended up collecting all the editions for quite some time and enjoyed hearing the music and reading the history and biography. A second Mozart edition came out and I was hooked. This time it was his piano concerto 26! Magnificent! Eventually I got tired of not knowing what all the blobs and lines meant, how they related to what I was listening to so during the summer break when I was 14 I taught myself to read music. I learnt to play basic melodies on my little sisters toy piano. It had two octaves and my fingers could just about land on a single key without hitting a neighbour, it was that small, but I delighted in playing melodies from the magazines I had bought which all had easy play renditions of the music on the cassettes. I learned to play the melody from the second movement of mozarts 26th and Boccherini's minuet. By this time music was playing in my minds ear almost constantly, I think because of my anxiety. I didn't know I was autistic, Aspergers wasnt really a thing back then. I just knew I was weird. After the summer break I asked to study music but I had already chosen art which I had a gift for so they said no. I showed the head of music a composition and he said, OK, you can do the exam and if you pass it you can study music. I passed it 97%. It was really basic anyway so I ended up doing music and just doing art in my spare time. I had access to a real piano now! My music teacher would give me the keys to his room which was an old out-building with a mini grand piano. I would spend 30 minutes everyday after school just playing some of the melodies I learnt and realised I could play my own melodies. I saw patterns that I could reproduce but didn't know how to define any of it. It was so exciting to play, I can remember the adrenalin of excitement kick in as i approached the piano and lifted the lid. It was magic! After a few weeks my music teacher heard me play and was impressed enough to ask me to play in front of the school at some assembly. I improvised a small piece in C major. My fingers were trembling but I managed to create something listenable. Then he entered me into a competition. I got to play a Steinway in front of a large audience and play a second run of what I had played previously. The judges didn't know what to do, I was the only one improvising and that wasn't quite what they were looking for so they gave the award to a trumpet player. I didn't mind, I was more interested in the sound of the Steinway. A few months later I was attacked walking home from school. The area I lived in was in a city that had a really high crime rate and many boys from my school were battling the boys from a rival school. Two boys from the rival school saw me in my uniform and knew I was easy prey. This was the third time I had been jumped in recent times and my trust of my safety outisde took a long time to rebuild. I stopped playing after school. In fact other than listening to music and following the scores I didn't play that often except during lunch breaks where a crowd would gather to listen. About this time my mental health deteriorated because of the constant violence where I lived and the ptsd, I retreated further into my own world, music was my escape. It was more than sound, it was a language I began to understand and my sensitivity to it grew. I realised I had a juke box brain and could listen without listening and music would be constantly playing in my minds ear. I would play around at trying to listen to entire concertos and not lose concentration in my minds ear. Sometimes other music of the same key would interfer and it was frustrating, or my mind would change the melody. I found that if I had the score I could hear more detail. I loved Cosi Fan Tutte, especially the trio when the two women and the old guy sing about the ship leaving with the two soldiers, so I enjoyed reading that and hearing the voices too. It was mostly mozart I listened to, but also my own. I could play choral music, hear the Kyrie, I would make it dramatic, plan out the instruments. I dreamt of being a neoclassical composer and being able to play the piano professionally. I was 16 and I left school to go to college. I didn't choose music, I became obsessed with languages instead. Music became just something I listened to and hid, it wasn't cool to like classical where I lived in a working class inner city estate. I quit college after a year because of social problems and mental health and just had menial jobs like cleaning, factory work, construction work. I was chronically underemployed throughout my life because of autism and its affect on me being able to socialise and deal with sensory problems. 12 years ago when I was 30 I bought a digital piano and started playing again. I didn't take it seriously and played whenever the whim took me, mostly when I was emotional and needed to release some trapped feelings. Emotions get stuck in me and I found playing would calm me down and release them. Especially happiness, that gets stuck and it makes me dizzy but I can release it by dazzling at the piano, which is mostly noise though. When lockdown happened because of covid I started composing minuets and watch YouTube videos on music theory. I composed a few shirt pieces using midi software. As my piano playing gotta but better I dropped the midi composing in favour of paper composing at the piano when I composed the set of D major variations. Life got in the way again, I divorced my wife and moved into my own place with my piano a few weeks ago. Now I can play as much as I like and its been wonderful to share my improvs, especially as I've got some good feedback. I really do doubt myself. Looks like I've written another book. I'm hyperlexic, that's my excuse. If you made it this far, thank you! Darren.

Hi, Henry I am really impressed with your compositions and artistically your seem to be going through a black phase where you want to express the depths of grief? I found the piece relaxing to listen to and not as dark as your perception of it. Nothing exists, except in contrast to its opposite, and when you try to grasp anything outside of that dichotomy there's just emptiness. That sounds like some deep philosophical thought but it's not. Light without darkness won't impress anything on consciousness like the way a fish doesn't see the water. Mozart used dissonance in one of his string quartets in a striking way so that the bright melodies that follow gleamed brighter still. It was clever AF because if you take the dark beginning away, the movement seems trivial. The idea of a contrasting intro wasn't anything new but here it is at the extreme opposite of the emotional spectrum. Your movement is certainly dark but it's not hitting with the pathos that it could be and at times feels lost in its sadness. The repetitive bass adds an element of reassurance and stability and has an almost funeral march quality. I've never been a fan of cluster notes so low down, they ought to be used for effect rather than sustenance. The romantics enjoyed using them following beethoven but without contrast the effect is lost for me. I enjoyed the contrast of the quicker higher notes and they came with some relief. I then thought, that may be the effect you wanted to achieve, to give contrast to the finale which may be beautifully bright. What effect do you want the listener to have? How do you want us to feel when listening? The bass line is relaxing in it's reassuring repetitiveness and doesn't hit any anxiety buttons for me. The weight of the bass can be tiring for the listener if silence isn't introduced strategically so that the return of the bass catches your attention. One thing in music I've noticed is that the landscape introduced to the listener has its effect depending on what's happened before. For example, even a piece of really simple music can be striking when reaching a climax that takes one of its elements to its extreme, whether that maybe the dynamics, register, dissonance amongst consonance. If you play pp for a minute and then play f, that will impress the listener more than playing ff throughout. I never quite understood why romantics want to dazzle with brilliance sustained for so long, or a heavy bass that's unrelenting. It doesn't create the effect desired and just de-sensitises the listener. Although it can be fun to dazzle. There are happier moments in your piece, major chords to break the minor for a while but not enough to affirm a dichotomy. The piece for me, while very clever harmonically!! Is missing direction and it may be me but there wasn't quite the harmonic sign posting that the classical era used. You know where you are in a piece because for example a pedal bass with harmony relating to the, I forgot the word, basically if you were in C major you first go to G and near the end you can play with F, if it's over a pedal it has an effect of sign posting you to the end. I hope I'm making sense with what I've been saying. I think your music is very clever and your playing is at a professional level, very impressive for us on a mostly amateur site like this. We are lucky to have you with your broad knowledge of music and kind encouragement. It doesn't go unnoticed. I haven't studied music theory yet, I mostly play and compose by ear so I know I have much to learn from you and others like you on here. I can only speak from a listeners perspective really. I look forward to the last movement. I hope it ends in major! Have you heard Mozarts E minor violin sonata, the way it reaches E major after those heavy sighs, I literally cried for two days after hearing that! I felt his grief, I lost my mother too and it hit me so hard, I kept replaying it over and over. I hope you'll use light to really hit the listener after hearing minor chords for so long, you can plan it to reach a point where the music feels defeated and then God pulls you in close like comforting a child. Music can be so powerful.