Short piece for my girlfriend

I composed this for my girlfriend's birthday. She loves Twin Peaks, and loves music of Giya Kancheli so that was the orientation in which I wanted to develop my composition. Also, she is beginner in piano playing so I need to make something relatively easy so she can learn to play but also composition needs to have "substance". Her last name is Henig, so I used that as idea for main theme, which is notes H-E-G (that is b-e-g in american notation, so basically e minor). Because she have this dark side in her (and a lot of bad things happened in her life), I tried to make beginning and some parts of composition in darker mood, but of course beneath that is huge will for life and for happiness, so I put as much hopeful, emotional sound as I could. Please listen, and say your impressions :)

Yes it's easy and yet has some material in it,

which is the best kind of pieces.

In my opinion at least.

I think that she'll like it :)

You should upload the notes for a better feedback.

5 minutes ago, Rabbival507 said:

y and yet has some material in it,

which is the best kind of pieces.

In my opinion at l

I'll give it another listen, now with the notes in front of me.

Impressive.

I'm sure that any girlfriend would be more than happy to get that as a birthday gift.

It's much better than the ones I gave to my love, you're more experienced than what I was back when.

Anyway- I don't see any way to improve it! It's really good as it is!

Also, you should explain all the things you had in mind to her too.

She will appreciate your piece even more if she'll know all the thought behind it.

Actually I know how to improve it! 

You might want to consider that-

(you are lucky enough to have a girlfriend who plays the piano too,

if I were you I'd do it with no doubt)

Write a piece for four hands!

If you are more experienced than her, 

and also want her to get the main voice for most of the piece,

you can be the secondo and let her be the primo.

Make it a four hands piece, and then you'd be able to play it together.

Get ready for some lots of fun!

Good luck with that and I hope that would work!

Thank you very very much!!!!

I cannot  stop laughing at myself that I didn't thought of that, playing together. I will definitely make 4 hands version. Thank you again for the comments 😄

Generally a really good use of tonality. Couple things to point out:
m. 4 - that quarter needs to be a half.
mm. 11-13 - I get it's supposed to a in reference to m. 4 with an inverted direction, but this seem like a weaker moment in the piece since nothing was supporting it. 
m. 16 - take a look at the level of your chord extensions. Tonic played with the 3rd and 9th together is fine, but you have a perfect fifth with the restatement of the 9th and the 13th, tagging on the 7th and 11th at the end. It's just a bit of awkward voice leading which makes the chord feel unstable. 
m. 19 - wasn't a huge fan of this cadence. What comes after, with the reference to the beginning is nice (maybe a little cliched but it's fine), but the cadence itself was off for me.
mm. 40-end - The reharmonization of the melody to the relative mediant doesn't sound particularly right to me, especially since the E functions as the new subdominant, which you leap away from (generally bad in reharmonized counterpoint). 
It's a nice little project overall, though.

Thank you Monarcheon for such a in depth analysis. I will try to make some thoughts also.

m.4 - just a mistake, it lacks quarter rest. You can see on the video, that I play m.4 with the right hand that melodic line which is written in the left hand (after the main theme, h-e-g)

11-13 - melodic line in m.10-11  (f-g-g-h-g)  is quotation from my earlier piece, that she really really likes, so I put it there, to have a small symbol, or reminder of me in her life, and after that I wanted to make new atmosphere with the left hand, as you correctly noticed in reference to m.4.  So, if I understood correctly, it is weaker because it's just left hand playing, or is it something else that is missing, some motivic relationship with the previous material, I'm not sure what you mean by "nothing was supporting it". 

m.16 - I constructed that chord just by going third down with the accompaniment in every bar, just like in m1-4, and added D because it sounded fuller.  I liked the sound I kept it that way, but I know that is unusual voice leading, and maybe I could find better solution. 

m.19 me neither 😄

m.40 I had one or two mistakes when I played on that video, in the accompaniment, maybe is that reason why it sounds "bad". Also I'm nor sure what you mean by relative mediant, do you mean upper or down - G or C. I feel this part is just G major, so that C chord in m. 42 is subdominant, and than F is just chord that sounded better than average cadence for me, it sounded like music just stopped, without real end, because it's story doesn't end, (story of her and me, because it's not ending, it's not good or bad, so that chord that doesn't fit as major tonic or minor tonic really sound right for that purpose)

1 minute ago, DMT said:

m.4 - just a mistake, it lacks quarter rest. You can see on the video, that I play m.4 with the right hand that melodic line which is written in the left hand (after the main theme, h-e-g)

Right. Just make sure it's in there.

1 minute ago, DMT said:

11-13 - melodic line in m.10-11  (f-g-g-h-g)  is quotation from my earlier piece, that she really really likes, so I put it there, to have a small symbol, or reminder of me in her life, and after that I wanted to make new atmosphere with the left hand, as you correctly noticed in reference to m.4.  So, if I understood correctly, it is weaker because it's just left hand playing, or is it something else that is missing, some motivic relationship with the previous material, I'm not sure what you mean by "nothing was supporting it". 

Oh, the melody in the right hand wasn't my issue. I just thought the relative lack of a sound world from such a short section in just the left hand was a little abrupt.

2 minutes ago, DMT said:

m.16 - I constructed that chord just by going third down with the accompaniment in every bar, just like in m1-4, and added D because it sounded fuller.  I liked the sound I kept it that way, but I know that is unusual voice leading, and maybe I could find better solution. 

Nothing much to say there. I definitely see how it works canonically, the leading makes it sound a little less related than it is.

5 minutes ago, DMT said:

m.40 I had one or two mistakes when I played on that video, in the accompaniment, maybe is that reason why it sounds "bad". Also I'm nor sure what you mean by relative mediant, do you mean upper or down - G or C. I feel this part is just G major, so that C chord in m. 42 is subdominant, and than F is just chord that sounded better than average cadence for me, it sounded like music just stopped, without real end, because it's story doesn't end, (story of her and me, because it's not ending, it's not good or bad, so that chord that doesn't fit as major tonic or minor tonic really sound right for that purpose)

I didn't listen to the video. It'd be the relative mediant of the original key, so G. The F chord on the end was nice, it was more just mm. 40-41. That E in G major especially with the subdominant tone in the measure right after. 

okay, now I'm understand everything :)