Two Slovak folk songs

Two pieces from song cycle I was assigned to write at summer semester at conservatory. Tam pod Salatinom has lyrics for a woman singer but my friend liked the piano so much that he took the liberty to change the lyrics a little bit so he could sing it at concert in our city. The second one is a short song I liked because it was fresh and funny and I learned a lot there about how not to complicate things.

The main thing I am looking for in critique would be notes on form and piano stylization. For example I learned that Tam pod Salatinom has hard changes for hand and making it unnecessarily difficult to sight read it and even a little awkward to play it. This summer I am trying to work on my form and developing an idea so I can create more cohesive works. The three stanzas of Tam pod Salatinom are based on the meaning of text so each stanza has different stylization. Also I tried to avoid unison of piano with voice to some extent at least since I find it hard to be at home while doing harmonic background for voice and hearing it how it sounds together. So gotta challenge myself in that I suppose. Any other suggestions? What do you guys got to say on harmonies and the sound overall? Looking forward to reviews. 

EDIT:

Lyrics for the songs. 

Tam pod Salatinom (There, below Salatin)  /Salatín is a mountain in Low Tatras, Slovakia/

There, below Salatín rustles a little green mountain,

my beloved told me, my beloved told me, that she does not love me

so I put a new feather, so I put a new feather behind my hat

and I wonder away

la dee da dee, la dee da dee 

to far far away (into the world)

In Biely Potok (White Stream/sort of a village south from the city of Ružomberok/) at Biely Potok

they play a music for dancing

and there in Martinček (another village near Ružomberok) and there in Martinček

people celebrate (Bursujú - have fun, eat and dance mostly in a folkish tradional way)

A white goose flew, a white goose flew onto the water

and she (the girl) lost her freedom (she got married).

Mother, do not cry, mother do not cry oh it will be soon,

for at the celebration, for at the celebration

a beloved one I shall find

I will take her, I will take her on a white horse

and I will love her

la dee da dee, la dee da dee

to the final days.

Počkaj diouča (Wait girl)

Wait girl I have something to tell you

wait girl I have something to tell you

Yesterday night you didn't want to open for me

neither the doors nor the gate

not even talking with me

Wait girl for you will regret.

Hello Kamil,

My first question is if you could tell me (and the others) what the lyrics of both pieces mean. Understanding the lyrics in combination with the music is in my opinion very important. 
I shall now give you my feedback on and thoughts about both pieces.

Tam pod Salatinom
The opening sounds very light. I like how you 'experiment' with harmony and how you already give away some of the melodic material that will sound later. This also applies to the Pockaj Diouca.
Personally, I think the opening and some of the solo piano intermezzi sound a little bit weird in combination with the parts where the voice is accompanied by the piano These parts with voice sometimes remind me of some of Schubert's Lieder, while the piano intermezzi don't sound 'classical' in the same way. On the other hand I must say that this contrast also has its charm.
Regarding form, I really like the structure of this piece. It's clear, as it has to be. Maybe you did it by accident, but I really like how you set the fluent, triplet figures in the piano accompaniment in mm. 5 - 27. against the more static sixteenth notes in the piano accompaniment in mm. 36 - 59. After this you present an even simpler rhythm, namely halve notes, quarter notes and eighth notes and you conclude with the same triplet figures as in the beginning, which satisfies my ears and gives the piece a clear end. Very smart, if done on purpose! Otherwise. . . it's still lovely. ;-)

Pockaj Diouca
Very nice harmony in the introduction!
In this piece there is much more melodic interaction between the voice and piano than in the Tam pod Salatinom. This makes the piece more compact, because the two lines play with each others.
The (aleatory) ending sounds pretty weird to me. The piece has a nice cadence, but it is disturbed by the small accelerando and random glissando. This is my opinion, you are the composer, so who am I to say it is correct or not.

Overall, I like the pieces. The melodies are very rich and the harmonies in the piano are interesting.
I hope this helps. Well done!

Maarten

Lovely old time melodies. A right proportion of a folkish sentimentality and a zest of more modern dissonant harmonies. Inventive use of ostinato figures and motivic fragments in the accompaniment. The piano has been used economically and yet it sounds rich quite enough.Plus, such a touching sensual live performance! Great! It is my personal preference, but I would have notated the Počkaj diouča in e.Thanks for sharing!

4 hours ago, Maarten Bauer said:

Hello Kamil,

My first question is if you could tell me (and the others) what the lyrics of both pieces mean. Understanding the lyrics in combination with the music is in my opinion very important. 
I shall now give you my feedback on and thoughts about both pieces.

Tam pod Salatinom
The opening sounds very light. I like how you 'experiment' with harmony and how you already give away some of the melodic material that will sound later. This also applies to the Pockaj Diouca.
Personally, I think the opening and some of the solo piano intermezzi sound a little bit weird in combination with the parts where the voice is accompanied by the piano These parts with voice sometimes remind me of some of Schubert's Lieder, while the piano intermezzi don't sound 'classical' in the same way. On the other hand I must say that this contrast also has its charm.
Regarding form, I really like the structure of this piece. It's clear, as it has to be. Maybe you did it by accident, but I really like how you set the fluent, triplet figures in the piano accompaniment in mm. 5 - 27. against the more static sixteenth notes in the piano accompaniment in mm. 36 - 59. After this you present an even simpler rhythm, namely halve notes, quarter notes and eighth notes and you conclude with the same triplet figures as in the beginning, which satisfies my ears and gives the piece a clear end. Very smart, if done on purpose! Otherwise. . . it's still lovely. ;-)

Pockaj Diouca
Very nice harmony in the introduction!
In this piece there is much more melodic interaction between the voice and piano than in the Tam pod Salatinom. This makes the piece more compact, because the two lines play with each others.
The (aleatory) ending sounds pretty weird to me. The piece has a nice cadence, but it is disturbed by the small accelerando and random glissando. This is my opinion, you are the composer, so who am I to say it is correct or not.

Overall, I like the pieces. The melodies are very rich and the harmonies in the piano are interesting.
I hope this helps. Well done!

Maarten

 

Hello and thank you.

I had some fun translating the lyrics although the translation is to be taken only for practical use of understanding the contents of the songs.

Tam pod Salatinom was a song on request by one professor at conservatory who has a young mezzo-sopranist who sings in a folk band and there is one older person who collected plenty of Slovak folk songs through villages and such{he also helped folk music in Slovakia to grow by creating communities, bands and places where people could learn folk dancing, singing, folk instrument playing and so). This person took the melody of one such song that has been given from one generation to another via ear only and added his own words. When I received it it was just one voice melody with lyrics. So even the introduction is harmonization of the given piece of sheet music and those little tails at the end of each stanzas are variations of the motive at the original sheet that was given to me. The original had the melodic end wirtten as it is in measure 60. So I can take credit only for the harmonization part. The development of stylization in the piece was a theoretical goal I gave myself before writting the music. (Fast "rustling" triplets flowing around in the first stanza, more dance-like and grounded at rhythm for the second stanza about the celebrations and a sensitive usage of typical chords with those added seconds/combined harmonic functions where they sounded good to my ear [which annoys me for the fact that the harmony was 80% intuitive and 20% knowledge based lol]) So it was on purpose and I am glad that it found a positive feedback :)

Yes I agree on the intermezzos not being smoothly compatible with the voice parts and the repeated although variated introductions cut the flow of the piece. Of course it should be divided but the way I had executed it was more theoretical than musical I think. But that's something I avoided quite efficiently in Pockaj Diouca although that is two stanza short piece. But better start small first right? I was much more happy with Pockaj Diouca for harmonies and definite form of stylization came very naturally and I finished it in cca 3 sittings. And those aleatorics in the end were meant to be played differently not by glissando. The original was in dorian mode from d but the recording is from e for the singer. The footnote at the last page says "Play with all ten fingers on the white keys." Which was a quite poor way to indicate the way I wanted it to be. Rather than boring classical cadence I wanted to add this climb in a fast irregular spider walking with figures. But the white keys from e have half tone between i-ii and it did not sound as good and trying to hit F# while doing that irregular spider walk was uncomfortable if not aleatoricaly possible. 

A small question for the end: As the dynamics of the piece with Tam pod Salatinom go... didn't you miss some culmination point? Apart from the measure 47 which goes nice with the succeeding text I generally feel the tectonics of the piece very calm in a not interesting way. 

20 minutes ago, MusicianXX12 said:

Lovely old time melodies. A right proportion of a folkish sentimentality and a zest of more modern dissonant harmonies. Inventive use of ostinato figures and motivic fragments in the accompaniment. The piano has been used economically and yet it sounds rich quite enough.Plus, such a touching sensual live performance! Great! It is my personal preference, but I would have notated the Počkaj diouča in e.Thanks for sharing!

 

Oh lol! How did I miss that? That's the con of notation softwares of today I guess :D. I just put transpose a major second higher for the singer and don't mind the key the software has chosen. Gotta keep an eye out on the details next time.