Katrina

Mr. Finney had the idea that it might sound better if it was played much faster than my original "Lento" marking. I uploaded this version over the first one. What do you guys think?

Edit: I uploaded one of the tracks too...

I posted this piece (also here) on pianostreet.com, and it received a very large response, especially by the concert pianist/teacher David Finney, who inquired about the sheet music. This morning he read through it for the first time, recording his initial impressions. He sent four run-throughs and one fragment (his Zoom recorder's memory card was exhausted).These are just initial run-throughs, but I'm very happy so far!http://www.box.net/shared/drh42gl7bt First Professional Recording!

Thanks! A change of pace for me...

Great! I was able to put up a score.

A sweet pea I put together for my dad's 59th birthday (yesterday) in the style he likes. Pastoral

Heh, heh! I just hope that your reaction to the scores is not like a person being taught how a magician catches a bullet, or escapes from a straight-jacket: disappointed, and sorry they asked! Thanks for your replies on both sites, Zach! Happy new year! :santa:

Having just listened to it, I was left wondering just what about it caused you, Sachs, to react so putridly. But it's obvious! You said it yourself, you were so put off by the theatrical overconfidence of the poster, that before you even listened to the music you built up this insane hatred for it, when it is clearly the kind of music that should at worst be met with indifference. Your argument seems to be based on two things: it is not good, and it is not representative of its genre. These statements could be used to describe most any music posted on this site, none of which you have reacted so meanly to. Well, your argument is not good, and it is (see SSC and jcramer) not representative of the site you claim the poster is cheapening. Perhaps you fancy yourself, like Debussy, a "hater of dilletantes?" Well, bravo, for you surely are. Ask a man what he hates most in others, and he'll tell you what he hates most about himself. But there are two prerequisites Debussy earned long before he wrote those wonderful articles, ones you have short-cutted. One was cleverness and novelty. While Debussy's Antidilletante referred to a cute Grieg piece he objected to as "A pink bonbon filled with snow(!)" you, Sachs, are forced to resort to the verbal arsenal employed by your nephew, the toddler. The second is obvious, isn't it? He was freakin' Debussy!!! Just to be sure, I made a quick survey of your own contributions. No doubt I assumed they would be on a par with your post, as you assumed of the original poster...but like you, I found exactly what I was looking for. As objectively as I can, I can assure myself and everyone else here that you ain't Debussy. Your two pieces certainly aren't trash (what music is?) but they certainly don't give you musical "street cred" sufficient to be able to judge anyone else's! No one's going to tear them apart, like you did to the poor solo concerto, but the silent indifference your pieces have been received by should shout to you just how "great" they are! If you think he's a troll, have the discretion not to feed him this limp bile. Because if he is, (19 replies in a couple days?!) that's exactly what he eats. Debussy had a palette of colors, both musically and in his criticism, that few have ever had. I suggest you acquire at least a few basic primary colors before you present yourself as his Second Coming, because the only "palette" you seem to be working with, Sachs, is an industrial toilet of beige and burnt sienna. :sith:

So you're saying he's got one "great tone" perfected? Good for him. 11 to go, and he'll have no need of us!

Thanks a million, man! And of course you're right. It would be a mistake to think I'm any more than an opinionated windbag on that subject, or really any musical subject. Still, that post was as fun to write as the etudes were to compose! And since I am not yet, and may never be, a professional musical critic or composer, I don't think it was wrong to think out loud, as I basically was doing, heh. Happy Christmas to you and everyone on the site, and may you all continue to grow leaps and bounds in the next year, as I hope to!

Truly, truly impressive! A little feast! I mean, it's complex but unpretentious, involved but rather "light" and with a sense, not only of direction, but also of humor! First 10/10 for me on this site! I know my words mean nothing content-wise, I'm pretty much a layman, but... Bravo!

Yes, absolutely right on all counts! Ligeti, my hero, though my music bears little resemblance to his, spoke candidly about how the impetus behind the writing of his legendary Etudes (these are Etudes too, you're right) was to compensate for his own undeveloped pianism. Well, my own technique is similarly undeveloped, and the impetus is the same! It's like a vicarious fantasy, though in this case vicarious through an inanimate (though pretty lifelike, don't you think?) Garritan Steinway sample! Lord knows this remains a hobby for me, like most of us. I've had no training, and never had the resources for higher schooling of any kind. It remains a perpetual dream to even have them performed, but for now your kind words will suffice! I thank you!

Thanks all, for your thoughts! It's true, the scores themselves could be polished, and the tunes further developed...

:lol: :lol: :lol: Not if you make a lot of mistakes (typos)! Or perhaps this was intended as a subtle joke?

Haha, thanks! You know, these works are really a microcosm (hmm..."Mikrokosmos?") that manages to encapsulate everything I think is best and representative of my own music: size and contrast Size: I've always thought that more is more and not less. Remember, in Peter Schaffer's Amadeus, what the childlike emperor's italian advisor told him, and which he of course then came to believe himself, "too many notes?" When done carefully, as Mozart did and I try to do, there is literally no such thing. In these pieces I layer 'em on in sheets! Contrast: I strive for complexity, but only because, to me, that sounds good, and never so much that the music is rendered inaccessible. That notion, "accessible" has been a contentious sore for longer than we admit in this business. I'll always contend that Schoenberg's axiom of "Freeing Music from the Consonant" was an ingenious and subtle way for an erudite composer to rationalizie his own snobbery. Whether or not (I sense a controversy) he has "Liberated the Dissonant" (which of course has led to a bondage for the Consonant greater and more bitter than the Dissonant ever knew) he did not do so organically. It was not, I don't imagine, his communal, "Everybody gets a turn" 12-tone ideas that occurred to him a priori (his early works are quite tonal) nor did he even arrive to them out of necessity (there are vastly better ways to produce atonal music than to assure there can be no other possible result)! And what a precedent! The 20th century would have been the "bloodiest" without the benefit of a single war, for real music as all but bled out, usurped by mathematics, machinations, and the human need to control. He was a snob. Which really is the same as saying he was a human being, but this human being had clout! Charismatic, celebrated men, with all their unilateral authority, well-placed in history, can literally shut things down for a couple centuries. I remember avidly reading the essay Charles Ives wrote to accompany his wonderful Concord Sonata. Most pronounced was his passion for dissonance, and the strengthening of musical muscle. A Yale man, he believed that what lay listeners often mistake for beauty is merely accessible and unchallenging, and of course he was right! He did what Schoenberg claimed to want to do, but he liberated Dissonance naturally, via the best tool in the composer's shed: he contrasted and juxtaposed it with classic Consonance. The 12 tone tyranny (I'm a liberal, but this seems to be akin to the tea party's revulsion for "Socialism") leaves no room for actual contrast, and we are musically musclebound! When Ives said what he said, perhaps he was right, but what the sophisticated listener now mistakes for complex and profound is actually pretentious and deadening, so perhaps we need to indulge for a while in what we really hunger for; rich, fattening, naive and decadent music, the better to balance ourselves out!