Manuscripts

I've had a discussion with a few musicians and we were talking about manuscripts. So here's a couple of mine.

Fantasia for Piano in D minor

www.nikolas-sideris.com/stuff/Fantasia1994.pdf

Written in 1994, I didn't have access to Finale back then (which must've been in version 3.0 or something...). So I was doing my manuscripts the best way possible. The piece was written when I was 16 years old or something like that, anyway. It's in a very tonal style, full of promise, written by someone who didn't know anything about harmony back then (but at least had decent ears I think). There might be issues of spelling, but the score is readable I think.

MFL for violin duet

www.nikolas-sideris.com/stuff/mfl2004.pdf

Written in 2004. 10 years after the previous one, I was 26-27 at that time, already in London for my masters degree, with one baby in the house! The initials stand for My F***ing life, exactly because I was facing some extreme difficulties.

A few words about the piece. I was also studying the art of fugue with a tutor in Greece, so this piece follows rather close the form of a fugue, with 2 (3 *ahem*) voices, the episodes, the countersubjects, themes, etc. Written in a rather contemporary language, it's still a passionate work.

The premier was given a day in December of 2004 in London, and the person responsible for the program accidently misspelled the title to "my f***ing wife"! I felt amazingly stunned by that. Fortunately we managed to redo the program, but at my fault that time I misspelt the name of the first violin. (true story).

Finally, here's the final Finale version for comparison reasons, as well as a studio recording of the work:

www.nikolas-sideris.com/stuff/mfl.pdf

www.nikolas-sideris.com/stuff/my%20fucking%20life.mp3

violin I: Marcus Barcham Stevens

Violin II: Alexandra Woods

Well...

Enjoy.

I love looking at hand written manuscripts of pieces. I'll try and find a mate with a scanner and get a few up myself.

Funny story behind the Violin duet too :lol:

Interesting to see how your manuscript style evolved over 10 years. It got freer and more fluid, to be sure, yet it's still quite readable.

Wow, your handwriting is immaculate. I'll try and get some of my stuff scanned up.

My handwriting is of the "functional" variety... entirely readable, but not of manuscript quality by all means, a bit of a glorified shorthand. Very good sheet music though niko :santa: