Prélude nr 3 for piano

Hello everyone,

I have not posted a composition for  a while. Last week I wrote a new prelude (short,as it should be) for piano, and here it is..

I still may have to make some minor revisions, by  re-checking the score and removing/altering some notes for enhanced playability, but most of it should be OK.

I would be grateful to obtain your comments!

Best regards.

So the music seems fine, with the exception of the fast part being way too short, especially since the pattern before it was a rising action.
What does throw me off is the engraving on your score. There are a lot of unnecessary note-rest patterns (like dotted eighth, sixteenth rest... unnecessary for piano), and a lot of unnecessary cross staff voicings (like in measure 2, you have a cross staff voicing on the and of beat three where the left hand plays Bb... why?). This combined with a lot of long measure lengths makes the piece ridiculously hard to read. Some rest beaming would be nice as well.
m. 18 - should be C#.
Somewhere in your slow section, a key change to F minor would probably be better.
But, yeah, as far as I can tell, the actual music was fine; just want more of it. 

I also like it a lot. Yes, some detail of engraving can be improved, just to make it clearer. But the composition is very very nice.

Hello Monarcheon , ilv and Luis

Thank you for your valuable inputs!  Here are my answers:

Monarcheon

Well, I thought that a prelude should be quite short. Many of Chopin´s preludes are even shorter. But then, the preludes of Rachmaninoff are longer. I could certainly extend it a bit more, but I will have to think about how to keep the balance and symmetry between the different phrases.

About the engraving: I agree with you that the score is very awkward to read (which is not good), especially the abundant cross-staff notes in the first part of the piece.  The use of cross-staff notes is always a bit arbitrarily. Some people can rapidly and effortlessly jump over large distances (while still keeping a kind of legato, which is admirable!), while other pianists have to rely extensively on cross-hands work.

Yes! The D-flats in M. 18 (and also m.20) should of course be C#.

A key change to F-minor is a good idea (although it concerns only a few measures). But it looks better!

 I made a first attempt to revise the score, and I have replaced the old one. I would be very grateful for your additional comments.   

ilv

I made a minor change in m. 5 to balance the flow of the melody.

The 7th leap in m.7 should not be too difficult when you work out a suitable crossing of the left and right hand.

The piece could of course be longer, but actually, I don´t feel that it is incomplete.

In m. 24, all the notes are in place, but in connection with the next measure, I agree that it is a bit deceptive (like something is missing). I made a small change. Please let me know what you think of it.     

Luis

Thanks a lot, Luis, for your comments. I am glad that you like it

Regards to all of you.

My opinion, for whatever it is worth (from someone with little music education), is that (1) You show a lot of skill in piano writing which works very well and is, perhaps one could use the term, very "pianistic". (2) But in my opinion the opening theme is not powerful enough, it's too simple and doesn't have much life force in it. It's admirable you were able to develop it, but it's not a worthwhile theme. (3) The second theme doesn't really complement the first one, in my opinion. You need better themes, better melodies. Somehow you need to let your heart sing out themes that are meaningful, powerful, have a hook, a personality, a character, true music. Other than that, you already have the capacity for development and writing that would lead to excellent pieces.

I like the melody actually, and the piano piece is very nice in my opinion. Congrats.