Andante in A

This is a piece much longer than my usual minuets and my knowledge of form is limited and perhaps that is limiting me taking on more ambitious projects but I submit it for review so I can learn and improve.

I'm glad to see that you're spreading your wings!  I think some parts of this are great but others lack thematic development.  Sometimes you default to a chordal and harmonic approach to writing when you should be focused on developing beautiful melodic phrases out of the main themes stated in the beginning.  Those chordal parts also lack rhythmic variety which is easily audible and can get boring to listen to (the part where the right hand has rising half notes for a couple of measures in a row for example).  I'm glad to see that you're writing longer and more substantial pieces however.  Keep going!  I look forward to more!

17 minutes ago, PaperComposer said:

I'm glad to see that you're spreading your wings!  I think some parts of this are great but others lack thematic development.  Sometimes you default to a chordal and harmonic approach to writing when you should be focused on developing beautiful melodic phrases out of the main themes stated in the beginning.  Those chordal parts also lack rhythmic variety which is easily audible and can get boring to listen to (the part where the right hand has rising half notes for a couple of measures in a row for example).  I'm glad to see that you're writing longer and more substantial pieces however.  Keep going!  I look forward to more!

 

Thank you for your honest review. This was my first ever composition written about 10 years ago, I wrote a few minuets after this around the same time when I first joined the forum but gave up music and composing as other priorities came about and started composing again in September this year due to being stuck at home isolating. Its quite special to me being the first time I wrote anything down but I thought it was worth a review before I compose any other longer pieces that I'm planning. Your advice is stellar as always, the chordal phrases are rather long winded! Thank you once again for reviewing! 

First of all, nice piece! I found it simple but effective.

Perhaps this is just my taste, but I think it could be shorter – there does seem to be quite a lot of repetition, and I feel that it might work better if you cut some of those sections out. (Although as PaperComposer mentioned, perhaps some more thematic development would also be a way to deal with this.)

On 11/7/2020 at 11:26 PM, PaperComposer said:

Those chordal parts also lack rhythmic variety which is easily audible and can get boring to listen to (the part where the right hand has rising half notes for a couple of measures in a row for example).

Agreed – maybe it could use some more dotted rhythms and triplets (or more-uplets if you want to get a bit wild 😁)

On the other hand, personally, I haven't made any significant changes to the first piece I composed – I've kept it as a memento of where I started and a sign of how far I've come since then (...or so I like to think 😂).

1 hour ago, Alexander Reiger said:

First of all, nice piece! I found it simple but effective.

Perhaps this is just my taste, but I think it could be shorter – there does seem to be quite a lot of repetition, and I feel that it might work better if you cut some of those sections out. (Although as PaperComposer mentioned, perhaps some more thematic development would also be a way to deal with this.)

Agreed – maybe it could use some more dotted rhythms and triplets (or more-uplets if you want to get a bit wild 😁)

On the other hand, personally, I haven't made any significant changes to the first piece I composed – I've kept it as a memento of where I started and a sign of how far I've come since then (...or so I like to think 😂).

 

Thank you for your kind review! I agree about leaving alone your first pieces as examples to compare with in the future but the feedback from you both has been helpful. I also like the idea of the uplets 🙂

I think the repeat bars actually help this a lot. It's pretty coherently put together and besides a little staleness on the rhythm front, I don't have any major things to say.

EXCEPT FOR THIS:

This is hilarious. Sorry, I mean, what that sounds like is like you're suddenly modulating into F# minor (beat 1,) that F natural actually sounds like an E#, which is what you would do (C# major -> F# minor, and F# minor is a valid modulation in A major.) But then, uh, you don't. I'm really really curious what you were trying to do here. As it is, it's just some random tritones for no reason, but I'm sure you had some kind of intention.

1 hour ago, SSC said:

I think the repeat bars actually help this a lot. It's pretty coherently put together and besides a little staleness on the rhythm front, I don't have any major things to say.

 

EXCEPT FOR THIS:

This is hilarious. Sorry, I mean, what that sounds like is like you're suddenly modulating into F# minor (beat 1,) that F natural actually sounds like an E#, which is what you would do (C# major -> F# minor, and F# minor is a valid modulation in A major.) But then, uh, you don't. I'm really really curious what you were trying to do here. As it is, it's just some random tritones for no reason, but I'm sure you had some kind of intention.

 

Thank you for taking time to review my work.

Hilarious? You must have a sense of humour drier than the British. Rather than saying 'sorry', just use the back space button, you do get a do-over in text messaging unlike speech, silly!

Perhaps it was a musical joke for discouraging, prescriptive theorists to dwell on haha! But seriously, it was the first time I put notes on a stave. I think I was trying to modulate to F# before arriving at E but at the time I had no theory knowledge and learnt composition through playing piano. 

4 minutes ago, Papageno said:

I think I was trying to modulate to F# before arriving at E but at the time I had no theory knowledge and learnt composition through playing piano. 

That's what it looked like at the start, but yeah you'd need to write it in C# then and actually, well, continue in F# for at least a couple of beats or so. It's something you can work on now that you know though.

42 minutes ago, SSC said:

That's what it looked like at the start, but yeah you'd need to write it in C# then and actually, well, continue in F# for at least a couple of beats or so. It's something you can work on now that you know though.

 

Thank you, SSC. If you get time would you take a look at my violin and cello allegro please? I struggled with the chromatic notes and I know there's mistakes but I lack the theory to make it work satisfactorily.