La Marioneta and Lucia

Hi all,

I've been composing music for a few years now, but I always did it just for my own entertainment.  It's something that I love very much and that really is the only reason I do it.  I don't really have musician friends to show my stuff to and after so long tinkering on the piano, there comes a time when you think, well I would like to know if anyone else thinks I actually have any talent for it or is it just in my own mind. 

Please feel free to say anything that comes to mind, I'm not too precious about it and I will always keep doing what I do no matter if you think it's good bad or indifferent, it will still entertain me equally.  At the same time, it is quite scary putting your work out there for all to opine if they feel so inclined, but the desire just to know what others think, has started to out weigh the reticence.  So here it is...................... do your worst LOL

The first piece is for solo piano - La Marioneta.  I'm reasonably pleased with this, but it has it's problems.  I'll leave it to you without saying too much about it just now.

The second piece is an orchestrated piano piece - Lucia.  Again it has it's problems but I am reasonably pleased with it, and again I'll not say too much to influence anyone just yet, just to say that the Lucia in question is Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor.  While the piece has nothing to do with Donizetti's masterpiece, it's an imagining of how a ballroom scene might go if she were to waltz off to the ball with the blood still on her hands.

I do tend to have the attitude that my work is very rarely completely finished, or at least to say that from time to time I do go back and revise work as and when the inspiration strikes.  Both of these pieces have had revisions and are now at a state where I feel they are approaching the finish line, but sometimes when you live with a piece for so long, it's hard to see (or hear) it, as others do, and they may see things that could be improved that I may not.   For this reason I've uploaded them both here.  The scores are available if anyone would like to see them then I will upload them too.

Thanks in advance to anyone who might leave me some words of advice, they will be very gratefully received.

Best regards

Mark

I've been working on a revision of La Marioneta.  I liked it as I said earlier, but I wanted to add a new development to give some contrast in the piece and to iron out a few other bits n pieces.  Is it better do you think?

Oh I forgot, I'm uploading the scores if anyone's interested, take a look.

I really love ''Lucia''. It reminds me of the many of Chopin's waltzes, except the beginning measures.
''La Marioneta'' sounds like a blend of several music styles to me. I hear some baroque, classical, romantic, but also modern music elements.

Very well done! I am looking forward for your next uploads!

Nothing to say about, except:

''Lucia'':
It is a shame that the piano sounds to loud or the flute and mainly the strings sound to soft.
Anyhow, the piano seems to overwhelm the other instruments qua sound in this computer-played version. 
It is worth to improve this, if you are able to do that in your notation program.

''La Marioneta'':
When you will get it performed by musicians, you will have to make the score look clearer qua notation. Some notes, for example, are overlapped by Pedal signals and clefs. This is just a little detail.

Kind regards,

Maarten Bauer

About La marioneta. I don' know exactly he changes you've madre but I feel the second part is improved.

I Jeep thing that ostinato rhythm comes from the Spanish guitarra.

Thank you Maarten,

I'm glad you liked it.  You're right about the sound quality of Lucia, the mixing is not very good.  I'm using Sibelius, but I really don't know much about the mixing side of the program, I'll have to experiment.  The problem is that it sounds fine when I listen directly to it in Sibelius, but then during the exportation of the file and then the conversion of the file into an mp3, the sound quality changes quite a lot.

As for the clarity of the score in La Marioneta, I do need to clear things up, you're right.  It tends to wander through a few key changes and I haven't done a good job with the accidentals.  The way I write is to sit at the piano and play into the program and so mostly the result is what the program used to interpret my playing, but it's good practice to go back and check all those details.

Thanks again

Regards

Mark

Hi Luis,

Mostly I changed some of the tonality in the earlier parts of the piece because I thought it felt a bit too samey, but you're right, there's no huge changes to that part.

I do love the La guitarra Español, and I think it has had an influence on the rhythms and general feel of the piece.

Gracias hombre

The fairy movement lucia is hot. beautiful. but i was thinking why do you put the typical walts pattern in the piano, when you work with so many instruments, I think in parts you can leave the piano walts rhytm away, and leave it to the other instruments, in this way youll have 2 different sets of walts rhytm flavour . 

The second piece made me think of in the first bars, but it went to a more ''hakketakke'' way. my musical ear told me it would go to a beathiful full melody, but instead it kept going, so this is a bit what i miss, is the outlined romantic melodies after the intro. now i thought, wow such long intro.

guess what censored meant. 

Good work

Hello Casper,

Thanks for your comments, I do appreciate it.  Lucia was firstly a solo piano piece that I later orchestrated and it honestly never occurred to me to change the piano left hand, but you're right, since there's now a string section doing all the "umm pah pah's" then the piano doesn't need to anymore, so I may well have another look at it and see what I can do because I like your idea of contrasting 3/4 rhythms.

La Marioneta, well it's not to everyone's taste I agree, I do like it as it is, for me, the driving force here was the rhythm that would be lost a little if I took into a full blown lyrical melody driven piece, but you do have a point that there are some melodies waiting to be developed that don't find a resolution in this piece. (What's "hakketakke"?, I'm assuming it's not good lol), but this is the first movement of a sonata in 3 movements so there's still time to develop the themes that are introduced here.  I'm working now on the second movement, I have the 3rd done already but I'm waiting to post it until the second is finished, or as close to finished as I get before asking for opinions, which is why I posted the 2 pieces here.  I do tend to have the atitude that for me at least, I very rarely call a piece truely finished because often I go back and revise my work many times when the inspiration strikes me, so I will take on board your comments when I next come to look at this piece.

As for what the meant, well again I'm not sure, but I guess it's not good

Thanks again for taking the time to give me your thoughts, much appreciated.  It's always good to have the opinion of others, even when they're not full of praise, and in fact, whilst it's always nice to hear that people like your work, good constructive criticism is often more useful.

Best regards

Mark

@mark101 let me reveal what I thought, i was thinking La Cumparsita! I'ts a good song, what I ment to say was that I would think with that song taken in mind, you would go more lyrical. HakkeTakke means for me like: playing very rhytmically, so that you can't really hear an melody line, its like the train passing by Thjk Thjk Thjk... I was not super critical, I think.

Greetings friend

Casper

Hi Casper,

I do take your point, and I don't think you were being super critical, but then I wouldn't have minded even if you were, we can only learn to be better if people say what they really think.  I'm currently trying to write the second movement as I think I said, and that's where I'm trying to bring a much more lyrical voice to the fore and develop the melodies that are there, but you are right in that this piece does have melodies but they are a bit hidden.  This also has something to do with the midi playing, in performance it's easier to bring those melodies out more.

When I wrote this piece, it was a stand alone piece and it all sort of came out in one go so to speak.  I spent a lot of time later shaping and polishing it but essentially the bones of it were created in the same sitting, and that driving pace that never lets up was one of the things I liked about it.  I did put in a couple of slower more lyrical sections but they are brief and maybe don't give enough of a break, I don't know.

Thanks again Casper, I didn't take any offense from your comments, quite the opposite in fact.

Regards Mark

I'll give a more detailed description later.  The main thing that sticks out which I believe is rather alarming is the string section.

You have two violins Vcl, and bass.  99% percent of the time, for strings you want to use standard orchestration. So either 1) use a standard string quartet or make it a quintet.  A piece like this that is quite approachable will be hindered by the abnormal instrumentation.  Remember ,the goal is to get performed.  String Quartets are already made.  My philosophy is don't make it harder for yourself!

Hi Maestrowick,

Ahhh, yes you're right of course, the reason for this unusual grouping is totally due to the sound produced by my midi program being better using this arrangement, but the usual quartet format is really what I should have used as far as the score is concerned.  I did try to write it at least with the idea that each instrument is at the right pitch for its part in a normal string quartet, i.e. violin, viola, cello and bass.