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Fun piece i made a while ago, quite happy with it.

This is my 5th minuet and trio from a series of 6. I tried to make each of these minuets unique and not in the style of Mozart or Haydn which is difficult. I set myself the restraint of only one note per hand so that it's suitable for beginners. My playing is a little hurried because I get nervous as soon as I press record and then I make mistakes. I can't get back those wasted 2 minutes! The pressure is intense! The trio is contrasting to the minuet in style and texture which maybe too much variety to be considered balanced. This problem infected my 6th minuet and trio too. For my next set of 6 I will endeavour to compose closer to the style of the late 18th century with greater unity and the use of more common phrase structures of the period. Thank you for listening.

so umm... music is one of my ways of procrastinating, believe it or not This sonata is written with my friends and my own struggles in mind. I won't go through the details of the piece as I believe analysis should be objective, but I would offer some of my experience and comments about this piece. fingerings and metronome marks are for guidance only, even I myself am not able to don't follow everything on the score. my recording of this movement takes 10 minutes but it's only 6+ minutes played by the computer, so seems like I took quite some time irl in playing the piece I find it very hard to interpret this movement, there is a lot of silence and "nakedness" if you get what I'm saying... but I don't do music for a living, so I'm not going to suffer from practice-till-perfect "ad lib" - add your own cadanza bars 161-163 - feel free to turn the bass into an octave if you play the Bosendorder imperial lol it seems like a problem for me is that my first movements are full of dissociated ideas (just like me as a person...) The introduction part of the movement had been set in stone for a while, but the exposition and recap of the movement was rewritten for a 3rd time, I basically discarded the first two ideas... but managed to fit the entire development section from how I wrote it the first time, so in fact you could even say I wrote the development of the sonata before the exposition, and it really shows. feel free to comment or critique, hopefully I'm receptive (you could tell I'm a rather stubborn person...) EDIT: I found out the spoiler function, so I will provide some more aspects regarding the creation of this sonata. Be warned though, spoilers ahead, even when this is just a discussion of the first movement, it will touch on aspects in later movements, not just the first one. If you prefer to listen to the whole thing before reading, you might want to do so after I have posted all the movements. 1. overall structure of the movement. I won't state bar numbers because I think the double barlines do a great job already 2. harmonic motifs Tell me more if I have missed other things in my own music (that is if you are prepared to be spoiled for this movement and the next ones..) Link to second movement:

In Britannica, faxbourdon is "produced by three voices proceeding primarily in parallel motion in intervals corresponding to the first inversion of the triad." I like that B diminished 7th chord!

So, maybe need some opinions? also I know it is sometimes jarring... P.S. there are huge numbers of reference to earlier movements/earlier section, especially the end.

Yup it's hard to review without the context. But even it refers to the 1st mov you don't necessarily have the G major here; only the material but in A major will be fine (and this transcends the materials bt raising a tone, isn't it?), since your modulation here for me is quite abrupt. Yup and the details are missing! You can add more dynamic markings too! Yup it's getting too complex to the point of lost here, I agree with you. Yup I know this is a collaborative work as commissioned by DFiacco, just make sure the piano will not be overwhelmef wi be fine if they are not going to be playec together in real life. For me I think the snare drum doesn't match at all. The snare drum is punching but the organ is like a huge woodwind.

Hi Peter, Thank you for your comments! I actually intended to write a theme and variations for the A theme; however, I later wrote the B section that I thought fit pretty well with the rest of the music and gave up this idea. I am unsure if I will call this a rondo despite having a similar form (ABACA) due to its slower tempo. I think this is all about influence: when I think of violin music, it gives me classical vibes since most pieces I listen to are by Paganini, Kreisler, Elgar, and Tchaikovsky. Consequently, most of my violin and piano duets are influenced by their styles, which have also affected the choice of harmonies in my compositions. However, when it comes to composing piano pieces, I am comfortable with using slightly uncommon harmonic progressions or modulations, such as chromatic mediants, since I have listened to many piano pieces in diverse styles. Perhaps, in the future, I may venture into this type of harmony writing when composing chamber music pieces. Carl Koh Wei Hao

Hey @GospelPiano12, Yup I like that faxbourdon texture in the top three voices! The chromatic bassline is more interesting now for the harmony and the bass! For me I would still prevent the over-chordal texture tho by having some voice moving in different rhythm. Henry

Awesome composition and performance. Some of the things I most like about this piece is the subtle cleverness of the writing -- for example, I really admire the D bass note on ms. 19 accompanying the G#7 chord, which smoothly transitions into the C#7 -> F#m. That kind of attention to voice-leading -- it's little things like that that inspire me to pay close attention to the details in my own writing, because I tend to like "big picture" stuff, but I often forget how much music is sometimes made in the "little decisions" as well. Like, if I had been writing this passage, maybe I would have chosen ms. 19's L.H. to have a G# bass note, which would be fine, but clearly it would have been a missed opportunity. Thanks for sharing, this was great!

Great piece! Very Chopin-like. I'm fitting a part of your piece into the conclusion of my next YouTube video premiere. Be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell so you are notified when the video launches. I'll also be sending out emails.

Great job with the progressively more difficult variations of the original melody and with including interesting countermelodies in the piano upon returning to the final recapitulation! I guess the form is a sort of rondo? I think this piece would be even more delightful if actually performed - I'm not a violin player but I didn't see any problems with the part making it likely that this could actually be performed at some future time if you find willing candidates! The piece also accomplishes what it sets out to do - namely being a study on the acciaccatura. But - and I always try to get composers to expand their harmonic language, have you considered the use of chromatic mediants, using stressed non-harmonic tones, or distantly related chord relationships? Your harmonic language is very classical/early romantic and in a way, conservative, and I know I would enjoy your music even more if you ventured into more remote areas. Thanks for sharing!