pianist_1981

Good day Johan, It was my pleasure. Per your request, here are some things to think about with the score: 1) Consistency with slurs: There are occasions where these have been used regularly and then suddenly drop out without a significant change in the musical material. Some examples are bar 27 (tail end, LH) and 30-32 (30, LH, 31-32 both hands). Some composers treat slurs in a similar manner to pedal indications, including them only when an unusual usage request is needed, but that doesn't appear to be the case with your engraving. 2) Consistency of written terms: As an expressive marking, "Cantabile" in bar 60 should be "cantabile" (italicized in the same font as your other expressive markings, lower case C). From 109-122, you have a number of tempo indications. Some are bolded, others are not, and "molto rit." is the only one with a lower case initial letter. I've never seen "A-tempo" with a hyphen, but perhaps that's a regional preference. 3) Bar 77: LH should be B# to match the RH. 4) Bar 104: What is meant by the little circle? Again, this is not something I've ever seen in a piano score of a work that isn't employing extended techniques. That symbol is usually used in string music to denote harmonics. The only other remarks I have are a matter of personal preference. In numerous places, you tie notes where I would prefer to see a single note (examples: bar 21 LH, bar 27 RH, bar 87 RH). I would probably also beam the 8th notes in the final variation given its rapid tempo. And lastly, when using courtesy accidentals (ex. bar 60), I prefer to see them on all instances of that pitch class in the chord. In the bar 60 example, seeing an accidental on the bottom C but not the top suggests the two are different from each other. This doesn't matter much when learning the piece, but it's a nuisance when sight-reading (the same applies to the tie issue). Hope this helps! Best wishes on your next project.

Oh, that can be arranged. That can certainly be arranged. Just post your scores here: https://musescore.org/en If you're lucky, you may even get the plagiarized version of your work plagiarized again - a plagiarism of a plagiarism.

Thanks for sharing this, Johan. I've listened to it a couple of times over the past few days and find it to be very well-written. The thematic content doesn't capture me, but that's largely on account of personal taste, not the quality of the theme or the writing. It has, for me, a style reminiscent of Schubert, using early Romantic period harmony with Classical era phrasing and articulation conventions. The only significant musical criticism I have is that the work is left sounding incomplete at the end of the final variation. A combination of factors lead to a strong sense that the work should continue. Perhaps that was your intention? Since you mentioned you were thinking of extending it, I'd personally think that's a good idea. I wouldn't add too much more, but a more conclusive variation to end would make it more effective to me. I also thought that continued arpeggiation in the LH for the first two beats of bar 79 may work better, as many of the variations end with a sustained chord involving both hands (and it works well in all those other cases). Beyond that, there are just some minor details in the score, none of which are significant issues. Hope this helps!

Haha! Yeah, I've been on some other forums that required creative ways around the profanity filters. Usually they'd replace all the cussin' with an unpopular person who was associated with the forum. I'm not making any suggestions. I've used up my daily quota of goodwill with a pair of other thoughts, I'm sure. I always admired Shostakovich for what he managed to accomplish in a dictatorship. Everything changed for him after the premiere of the 4th symphony. Although awful for him, I actually don't think this was a terrible thing for music lovers, as a number of his best-loved works are more conservative in nature and were written after he received the thinly veiled "review"/threat in reference to his 4th symphony.

Is that some new gangsta rapper or something?

When I heard this I was left wondering if you'd heard the same amusing anecdote about Shostakovich that I'd first heard in my university days. Stalin and Shostakovich obviously had no love for each other, and so as the story goes, Stalin asked Shostakovich to do something impossible in order to give him an excuse to deport him to Siberia - compose a new symphony for a state occasion with a day's notice. Knowing this was impossible, Shostakovich was completely frantic. In desperation, he asked his trusted copyist to run down to the library, find a symphony by an obscure composer no one had ever heard of before, and transcribe it backwards. The faithful copyist obliged. The next day, a smug Shostakovich sat in the audience awaiting the premiere of his "new work." Imagine his horror when the orchestra began playing the opening of Beethoven's 5th symphony... Now, amusing as it is, of course the anecdote falls apart as soon as it mentions Stalin looking for a reason to deport someone. He never needed a reason for anything.

Um... it's nice and all, but I'm pretty sure this is plagiarism of a work by DailyDuo, formerly known as DoYourDailyDuo... I believe this is from his "but it's in the public domain" phase.

Yuchanbot - wow! This is a very accomplished work. As others have mentioned, it's highly demanding, and you would likely find it difficult to find performers willing to take it on, which is unfortunate because it absolutely deserves a performance. Beyond what's already been mentioned, I have only two general remarks to consider: 1) Be careful about double stops, especially in the low registers. While playable, they have a muddy sensation which is not replicated by electronic performances. I really do hope that at some point you will be able to hear this played so you can make an informed decision about whether to leave them as is. Some people like the effect. 2) Related to no. 1, fully voiced chords in the low register of the piano also have that same muddy effect. Personally, I would only ever include the third if I want it to be muddy - and in the places you use these fully voiced chords, I wasn't left with the impression that this was the desired effect. Beyond that, I found the work to be very well-constructed and interesting from start to finish with some genuinely moving moments. In particular, the second theme (m. 44), the codetta (m. 80), the climax (m. 122) and the coda (m. 166) stand out to me. From a scoring perspective, I'd consider transitioning to treble clef in some of those LH arpeggios. It makes it much easier to read. I'll end by saying that although it is obviously a personal choice regarding whether to finish this work or not, it would be a shame if you do not. Just my opinion. There's so much potential here. Now let's see... there's something I'm missing... oh yes, how could I forget? Did you know you can upload your music to musescore!? Here, I'll even post the link so you know where to go! Isn't that nice of me!? https://musescore.org/en

Good day, J. Santos: I assume when you say this is experimental that you are referring to the harmony? The piece should be effective in that respect. MIDI performances of piano are always terrible - you never get a true sense what real pedalling and voicing sound like. If you haven't already, be sure to play the piece on a real piano to ensure that you find all of the harmony to your liking, and be picky about it. This is important to do with any composition but is especially important when you start exploring new harmonies that you haven't dealt with much before. I've never written a piano work that didn't change substantially after I started playing it. It's not the form or musical content that changes much - just the details, accounting for ease of playing and effectiveness of the sound. Many things that sound like they work on MIDI don't work that well on the real instrument. On a different note, I'm uncertain if you consider this piece "finished" or not. If you do, ignore what follows. If not, read on: If this were my composition, I wouldn't be satisfied with the rhythm in bars 9-25. In the first eight bars, you have a very natural rhythmic flow. But the continuation of your cadential rhythm from bar 8 in the subsequent phrase is not effective to my ear. Two possibilities come to mind: broken chord accompaniment (steady flow of 8ths in LH rather than stopping on dotted half), or syncopation of the top note on off beats (thus, starting on beat two: eighth/quarter/quarter/eighth, or perhaps better eighth/quarter/eight-eighth-eighth with octave displacement on the second to last eighth). In my inner ear, option 1 sounds better in this context, but both work. The goal is to avoid a sense that the music keeps stopping on beats 2-3. If anything, you want increased motion here to build on the first 8 bars and lead to the dramatic contrast at 27. What you did in 16-18 is a good example of that, and for me those are the most effective bars in the 9-25 span. Hope that helps. Keep it up!

Indeed. I can say that writing these gave me a new appreciation for what Mendelssohn accomplished in writing so many of them. You'd think it would be easy to put these short pieces together. Then you try it and find that it's much more difficult to write something compelling in short form than it would seem to be. There is a great deal of truth in the notion that there is a difference between simple and simplistic. I threw out an awful lot of ideas that just didn't work.

I find it to be an effective work. It may seem like a small thing, but I especially like your inclusion of major seventh chords in the chorale segment. I have a particular affinity for that chord, and its appearance in a much simpler harmonic context draws attention to its beauty. I find these extended chords have much less impact when used in a denser, more chromatic work. They get lost in that. I have said in reference to other works posted by composers who are clearly comfortable with their craft that there would be little value in me offering criticism, as there is nothing of a technical nature to criticize. I will echo that sentiment here. Early or not, it's a confident work, and though it is clearly more traditional in its harmonic approach than most of the other works I've heard from you here, I personally find this simpler approach to tonality highly effective - something characteristic of my own work. Thank you for sharing, and keep posting here. I've been remiss in responding to your works, but as you can tell, the views keep building slowly over time. I think a lot of people like what you write a great deal even if they don't say it outright.

Some very insightful thoughts have been shared here already. For the vast majority, music is not engaging out of context. It has to be connected to a cause, a social experience, a good memory, an enjoyable event, or something else directly relatable and meaningful to the person. People without musical background will routinely describe music and identify with it by those terms - "that would be great for meditating in yoga class," "I could really see that being used at the start of a church service as the procession is coming in," or maybe "oh, that would be great in a horror film when the axe murderer's about to jump out from behind the curtain like in that one movie I saw with my friends and we all, like, got freaked out and it was so fun lolololol!" It is for this reason that most people don't want to attend classical music events but will line up for days beforehand or pay scalper prices to attend popular music events. It isn't because the music itself is better or more entertaining per se - it's because of all the other things connected to the show that make it desirable to be in attendance. It's the same with sporting events. If there was no alcohol and you had to sit quietly and just watch, do you really think that people would show up by the thousands for every game? If there was no intense visual stimulation, would popular music and sporting events be as popular as they are? I'm reminded of this Simpsons scene (around the 30 second mark). The simple answer is no. We often expect that professional musicians are going to be somehow different from the general population, but we are driven by the same impulses. The only real difference is that we can generally find meaning just in listening to the music provided it aligns with our musical preferences. Thus, we don't always need an external context to provide meaning (something which I didn't realize is so rare when I was younger). The sound itself is enough. But if the music doesn't align with our personal tastes, the ability to find that meaning or enjoyment is lost, and listening to it becomes just as tedious as it would be to someone in the general public. Be honest with yourself: if you can determine (as most of us can) within the first 30 seconds that a piece posted here doesn't align with your musical preferences and it's longer than 5 minutes, have you ever listened all the way through? More than once? Do you really care how well-written or artistically valuable it may be? Do you feel compelled to praise it with something more than a back-handed compliment? Would you choose to play it yourself or pay money to go to an event in which that piece was featured? Would you even go if it were offered for free? Nothing is really free. Even if you aren't paying to attend a concert, you're spending your time, and if you get nothing out of the experience, why would choose to do that if there isn't an extra-musical factor driving the decision? I have a little anecdote to share regarding my 2018 recital, the first I'd done which was entirely comprised of my own works. After it ended, some people came up to talk to me, and one conversation in particular stands out. A lady with a musical background approached, and after the obligatory "thank you for sharing your pieces" comment in regards to my piano preludes, she asked me who had written "that stunning trio in the second half." There was no printed program, and evidently she hadn't realized that I was the only composer in the program. When I told her it was me it was perfectly clear through her reaction that she thought I was joking. She asked again - and I confirmed again that I had written it. The shock was obvious. Clearly this educated, musical person - sadly like so many educated, musical people nowadays - did not believe that a genuinely moving work could have been written by a living art music composer. It got me thinking - why is this so difficult to believe? (This is where I'm sure I'm going to start ruffling some feathers here.) The reason it's hard to believe is that for the better part of a century now, art music composers have been writing music which, frankly, fails to entertain or provide any sense of meaning to the vast majority of the population, including even people with significant musical backgrounds. It's almost like a cult - those who take their art to the university level have it drilled into them for years that they must promote new music and include it in their programs. They're told that new music must be "fresh" and "break new grounds." Consequently an awful lot of professional musicians perform or compose this music solely out of a sense of obligation or duty. They pay lip service to the importance of this type of music, but secretly, most of them don't actually like it - something that is easy to recognize when you notice that most of them are regularly in attendance for performances of works of the past but rarely show up for contemporary-only events. Like Quinn, I'm a bit surprised that this topic even came up. If you genuinely like contemporary art music and would choose to listen to it or even pay to do so, certainly you must understand that you are part of a very tiny minority. If you like and promote older styles of art music, you are part of a slightly larger but still tiny minority. But does it really matter? Personally, I'd rather have ten people come to my recital because they genuinely want to hear my music than 10 000 who are mainly coming for the intoxicants, socializing, and light show. If you're interested in commercial success, you need to adjust what you offer to what people want to hear. That's never going to be contemporary art music.

I can see why this grew on you. It's a catchy theme. My tolerance for modern idioms has grown over the years, and though I would never write in this style myself, I don't hate it as I once did. What I have noticed, though, is that I find this sort of writing works best in short pieces, and that's probably part of why I like this. As Quinn mentioned above, it's very coherent, and I personally find it doesn't overstay its welcome. Though I'm not a wind or brass player, it does seem to me that this would be extremely challenging, especially for the horn player. And unfortunately, if not played precisely much of the effectiveness would likely be lost. But it certainly isn't impossible to find chamber groups willing to include brief pieces like this in their programs, and if that ever happens I hope you'll share the recording here. I'd be interested to hear it.

Yeah, for all intents and purposes Baldwin went out of business quite some time ago. They're now a shell of their former self. I think they were primarily sold in North America. They've got a big, rich sound though most people find the action inferior to other names. That isn't a concern with this one, as it was retrofitted with a Renner action when my teacher purchased it. Apparently this is much better than the factory Baldwin action. The nicest thing about Baldwins is the balance. They patented a system that naturally amplifies the upper register, and so you don't have to work as hard as you normally would to balance the top end against the bass. It's a world of difference playing a Baldwin compared to the European makes, or even American Steinways. But it comes with a price - there's plenty of ring up there with no dampers, and so it can be muddy and less clean and precise. Lots of people don't like that. It may have played a role in why the pianos never became that popular. One of the nicest pianos I've ever played is a 9-foot Baldwin that was donated to a local church. The acoustics play a role in that - it's a big space and the piano sounds exceptionally beautiful in there. Receiving that donation instantly turned the place into the go-to location for chamber and solo recitals in this city.

The first five minutes of this piece is the most moving writing I've ever heard on this forum. I'm not easily impressed, and I've been coming here since the early 2000s. It is sensational writing, and you are a sensational talent.