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Hi all. Here's a performance of my piece "Elegy" from a recent recital by professional pianist Neil Crossland. Think he did a great job with it. The piece is more expressive than I've ever heard it before. Have also included an updated score. Hope you enjoy! Alex

I love your interpretations I really appreciate your time, effort, analysis, care, talent, etc. etc. I'm in awe someone would take the time to be so kind to me in unimaginable ways. The next step with these surpasses YC. I'll message you in discord about it 😄

Hey Vince, I am really happy I have the chance to play all of them. I enjoy this journey very much and thanks for letting to play of them with my own interpretation and freedom haha. As one playing all of them, I now has my own priorities over them: 12>9>6>3>2>7>5>10>11>8>1>4 It's strange my favourite ones are all in the multiples of 3. But that may show the pattern of the preludes. Maybe The 1,4,7,10 ones are opening pieces of a subset and you are trying new directions in each of them: No.1 is the beginning piece, no.4 you are trying with tossing with the Baroque style, no.7 getting away from the inwardness of the 1st half of the prelude set, and no.10 the longest one when you are dealing with motivic method to compose. They are great too, but the others are even greater! The middle pieces 2,5,8,11 they act as the contrasting piece of the first one: no.2's warmness versus no.1's coldness, no.5's lightness versus no.4's learned style, no.8's heaviness versus no.7 carefree style, and no.11 as the shortest piece and the introductory piece to no.12 versus the longest piece of the set, the no.10 one. But it's like in each ending piece 3,6,9,12 you achieve great synthesis of the first two, or a great conclusion to them. No.3 has both the sadness of no.1 and warmness of no.2, no.6 as both the counterpart of the less emotional no.4 and 5 and the tragic no.3, no.9 of course the great dance reacting with the no.7 and no.8, no.12 the great summation of the set, quoting moments from no.1,2,3,6,7,8. My favourite is changed to the no.12 one after playing it, over no.9 No.9 is a very enjoyable piece with great rhythm and fire, but the no.12 one just penetrates right into your heart. That Gb major is so well chosen, or fortituosly chosen when it's the only note left, but it makes the piece so consolatory and introvert, hinting at the farewell mood as in Haydn's Farewell, and the pentatonics in Gb is great like Chopin's Black Keys. The middle section is so soulful: it appears to be carefree but definitely not inside. The return to A major which kind of replies to the A minor of the no.1 is great too. I defintely feel the piece while playing it. Thx for sharing your set of preludes Vince. I thoroughly enjoy them! Henry

Hi! I've just finished writing flute trio (Journey to the Ancient World) in three movements as a composition assignment for my composition class... This piece was inspired from George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children, and melodies and harmonies are based on pitch class sets (3-pitch sets) and their transpositions, inversions, rotations, etc. from various melodic motions of the Crumb's piece... First movement (Time Travel) describes the traveler's feeling of excitement and expectation of the past he or she has never previously experienced, second movement (Dreaming of Conversation) is about the traveler's anticipation of communicating with prehistorical people he or she will encounter, and third movement expresses the traveler's feeling of happiness from communing with those people... In second movement I also added some quotations from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (Adoration of Earth) motive (C-B-G-E-B-A C-B-A-D C-B-G-E-B-A)... Hope you enjoy this piece, and please don't hesitate to give me any comments!

Hey Alex, I have listened to the previous version before and loved it, but sorry for not playing it. At lesat I am relieved that you get a much better recording from a professional pianist. The piece is beautiful. No matter what technique we have, only music with real emotions and things in it can touch people, and I am for certainly touched hearing this piece. The opening modal melody is very nice and very "you". The change to G minor and with that augmented F#-Bb-D chord is very beautiful. I actually love the staccato theme in b.27 as well since it's provide some sort of liveliness, both lively and living with us as the one passed away always live in our hearts. The ending is very beautiful as well, ending on a 2nd inversion chord is nice for me since it adds uncertainty to the ending. Thx for sharing your music and the lovely recording! Congrats on that! Henry

Great performance, and great composition! You both should be very proud of the effort here. I absolutely LOVE the A section. The rhythmic ambiguity was so cool, as bare bones 4/4 was nonessential to the interpretation and gave a delightful surprise to your phrasing. It was near impossible for me to tell what was coming, whether it a short flurry of notes or something airy and sustained. Awesome Maybe it would have been cool to try out a different way of notating? I kept thinking of those meter-less Boulez pieces. Dunno, might be cleaner, might not. I haven't tried it myself yet. I really like the counterpart to the A section with the 3/2 part. The free rhythm vs. strict rhythmic pulse is a cool concept that I admit I hadn't thought of until I heard your piece. Definitely something I'm going to explore; I'm very happy I clicked on your music 😄 The staccato theme at bar 27 kind of threw me off, if I'm honest. I don't know, maybe it's subjective and just me, but when I pair peanut butter with jelly, I don't want to add ketchup. Just the feeling I got. It was fleeting so not that important. Congratulations on the live performance! I'm sure it was helpful to confer with the pianist for your own compositional studies. Well done, thanks for sharing 🙂

To add to Vince, in my opinion, music doesn't always have to be original. But I want to emphasize that I actually enjoyed your "Beethoven-esque" sonata more than a lot of Beethoven's own sonatas! That is tremendous value to any listener, even if it is of a similar style. And Henry, as I go through your piece and notate it carefully in Music Jotter, I am truly appreciating how very rhythmic this piece actually is. I had to take a day off from scripting my next video which will be 100% dedicated to you, because I had to fix a few things while I was notating! Your piece also inspired me to create custom note spacing, sooner than later. The reason for this is because some of your voicing has spacing that does not overlap notes (which is a Music Jotter default), but is spaced a bit to the right. I'm not sure what my video will be about yet, but I have some ideas. I will see how much of your piece I can actually notate in Music Jotter, then I may try to record parts of it in midi.

I love the violin parts.