Soliloquy for Violin No. 29

This is my 29th soliloquy for violin.

Here is the link to my previous violin soliloquy:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/t34051/soliloquy-for-violin-no-28/

HI,

This sounds very baroque to me. It reminds the partitas. I like the ddevelopment of the motive here and the way a single line fills the harmony. I'm not sure about the double stops, I always take care with that. I think that 5ths are hard, ... not sure. The pauses are effective.

Sorry, this is relatively unfocused to me. The issue with short pieces in general is that you're kind of forced to find form where there isn't necessarily one to find. I see the parallel between the passages at measures 8 and 16 (which I analyze as motifs "f" and "g") but have too many of these types of analytical motifs and it begins to feel messy.
The transition between the first and second measures is an awkward voice lead, pretty much because you jump from the high tonic to the low tonic. The second is weird because you're jumping from the dominant tonic to either another dominant or a leading tone to the minor mediant, both of which are awkward. Measure 7's bowing is awkward and pauses on an up bow.
Measure 8, you're going to want to mark all of these figures down bow, unless they're not, in which case it's more awkward.
Measure 12 gets me. I know what the gesture is here, but seeing a fermata on such a short note is ridiculous. The notation looks better as a grace note to the beat. The bowing you currently have for these figures is also very hard to play.
Is m. 21 strictly in time? If not, then the double stops are manageable, but if so, the double stops are annoying.
M. 23 you have a descrescendo on an up bow, I don't know what was wrong with keeping the same bowing throughout the phrase.
The last measure's double stops are hard since they have to jump back to play the octave after the 5th position diminished 5th. 
I hope you know what I mean by all this. Cheers;

Thanks Luis and Monarcheon for your reviews.

@Monarcheon: Thanks for going into detail from a player's perspective. I am not sure how you calculate where I have upbow and where I have downbow when I have never indicated them. Are you relying on the slurs or their absence to infer them?

I am not sure what you mean by "dominant tonic". It also begs the question whether there is a "non-dominant tonic". As far as I know the tonic and the dominant cannot coincide in the same note unless we are talking about two different keys. In any case, when I compose, I only listen to my inner ear and rarely analyze the note relationships the way you have done.

8 minutes ago, luderart said:

I am not sure how you calculate where I have upbow and where I have downbow when I have never indicated them. Are you relying on the slurs or their absence to infer them?

Typically, if there's a passage or phrase that continues for a long time, the absence of bowings can confuse a player initially, especially if they're on a weird one.

9 minutes ago, luderart said:

I am not sure what you mean by "dominant tonic". It also begs the question whether there is a "non-dominant tonic".

Sorry, I misspoke; rather, I meant the tonic of the dominant triad, as opposed to referring to the entire dominant chord.

In general, I enjoyed listening to this one very much. But I have to admit, the section in m. 11-14 confused me. I don't really understand why it's there. It's a nice rhythmic motif and could perhaps be used to greater effect in a piece of its own, but here it just seems to interrupt the flow of the motif you had already been building on. It does reappear at the end, but you could just as well have ended on the fermata in m. 23. I also think that Monarcheon is right that the rhythm could be notated more clearly. I hope you consider revisiting that motif for your next soliloquy, as I really do think you could develop it much more than you have here.

On 10/3/2016 at 1:51 AM, fishyfry said:

In general, I enjoyed listening to this one very much. But I have to admit, the section in m. 11-14 confused me. I don't really understand why it's there. It's a nice rhythmic motif and could perhaps be used to greater effect in a piece of its own, but here it just seems to interrupt the flow of the motif you had already been building on. It does reappear at the end, but you could just as well have ended on the fermata in m. 23. I also think that Monarcheon is right that the rhythm could be notated more clearly. I hope you consider revisiting that motif for your next soliloquy, as I really do think you could develop it much more than you have here.

 

Thanks fishyfry for your review. I am glad that you enjoyed listening to this soliloquy so much. As for the motif in measures 12-14 that you refer to, I think, having listened to it a lot of times, that it is exactly where it should be. Regarding its reappearance at the very end, you might have a point that the piece could well have ended before it. But its reappearance I believe serves the function of wrapping things up at the end. I believe you are right that that motif deserves more development. And thank you for your idea to revisit it in a future soliloquy. Maybe in the future I will do so and do full justice to that theme.