Piano Sonata in G

This is a little Classical-style piano sonata I've just finished.

Wow! Its brilliant! It has the classical, early romantic feel but I hear your voice and its really inventive, clever, and surprising! Well done! I'll be coming back to listen again, I absolutely love it!

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! 

The structure of the 1st movement is quite curious.  Your development section and recapitulation seem to almost meld together.  In m. 67 when your secondary theme comes in in G it sounds like it's part of the recap because it originally occurred in D, but then your treatment of the primary theme in m. 77 is very developmental and touches on B major.  Also, the 1st ending sounds unsatisfactory to me as a way of getting back to the beginning of the exposition - it's too short to adequately prepare the listener for the return imo.  Near the end in m. 90 when you bring back the primary theme, you start cycling through keys (Bb, D, G) quite rapidly which is usually more characteristic of a development section than an ending coda.  Overall an enjoyable listen however!

2nd movement:  I like the way your abundant number of themes organically grow out of each other and each section leads nicely to the next telling a great melodic and harmonic musical story.  The form here is quite unusual as well - seems through-composed.  I think some variety in your ornamentation would have made this sound less mechanical too (all those 64th notes!).  For a slow movement this was great!

3rd movement:  Your form here seems much more clear and despite modulating to quite distant keys in certain parts you manage to end up back in G major.  You use great variation techniques when sometimes bringing back the primary theme (m. 33 - 39) which almost makes it sound like a type of rondo or maybe rondo-sonata form.  Sometimes your use of vamping on a chord (m. 43) throws me off and it sounds like those two measures interfere with a clear perception of the phrase structure.  It seems like you could have just gone straight into the melody at m. 45 without the need for those chords.  One more thing - your material at m. 100 and when it comes back barely seems to fit into the context of this Haydnesque sonata - it sounds very romantic and inspired by sturm und drang type of style of writing.  But still you seem to make it work and you have an abundance of themes and material that somehow manages to stick together.  Well done!

Thanks very much for your comments!  I consider the first movement to be in sonata form but with further 'development' occurring in the coda.  And since the opening theme was also used at the beginning of the development, and would be appearing in the coda, I omitted it from the beginning of the recapitulation lest it wear out its welcome.  The second movement is really 'slow-movement' sonata form (without a development), but with the accompaniment varied in the recapitulation.  I do see what you mean about the ornamentation - perhaps when the second subject reappears it should do something different from those 64th-note turns.  I also take your point about the vamping chords in the third movement throwing off the rhythm of the phrasing.

Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts - they are very helpful!

First movement was fun to listen to specially when it goes entirely off the rails, like in measure 38-39 and the section afterwards with the tremolo. It's jarring enough that it makes the stuff that comes after that seem like compensation. Then there's measure 66 that's just ????, maybe you can figure out a better voicing for this that doesn't feel so harsh? All in all, reminds me of the stuff Mozart did that was really awkward and he would spend a good amount of time trying to compensate by making the most cookie-cutter filler possible to make people forget he just suddenly sprung some augmented chord or whatever out of nowhere.

The second movement is a little disappointing after hearing the first. It's a little more on the Beethoven-Early romantic side than the first movement, specially with the rubato segments and the little subdivisions. But yeah, it's competent. Also, maybe think about using those 5ths a little more sparingly in the left hand, since they do sound kind of harsh, specially noticeable in the beginning (m 5-7.)

The third movement also has it's moment of going off the rails, which is the modulation that happens in measure 100 onwards, which I think is actually the highlight. You actually repeat it later (m. 169), since, y'know, it's hella cool. It's extremely outside of the style to do that kind of jarring change (Amaj, Dmin, Gmin7(!), Cmaj, Fmin(!?) and so on) but just like the change in the first movement I think it gives it a lot more character than the rather generic, though competent, beginning. Speaking of that section, do please add safety accidentals, specially in like measure 178 the B there is not flat, but I'm 99.9% sure that people will play that flat by accident on the first few readings.

I like the way you transition into the reprise too and it's a little comical coming from something so dramatic. As for the ending itself, I want to play the last chord once more at the end. Or twice more. It just ends too abruptly in my opinion, and it would go with the stop-and-go movement of the ending cadence.

It's like it suddenly

Thanks for listening, and for your comments!  You make some good points, particularly about the parallel/hidden fifths at the beginning of the second movement.  And on looking at it again, I agree that the third movement ends much too suddenly.

This is a good sonata. I've composed worse. My best sonatas have tended to be those for duets. As for that cycling between keys in the coda, while not common for Haydn or Mozart, Beethoven does do that in for example his Eroica symphony, where the coda becomes like a second development(though the only symphony with a literal second development and recapitulation that I've heard is Symphony no. 8 in F major, Beethoven, the idea of the coda being more developmental has earlier roots).

The imitation of the second movement is very well done. I myself am composing among other things, a sonata for Violin and Cello, and I started off with the second movement, which typically has 2 or sometimes even 3 melodies going on at once, so I have mostly melody and countermelody going on in that movement.

The third movement to me kind of sounds like a crossover between the Rondo and the Scherzo(bringing back of main material like a Rondo, humor of a Scherzo), which I've seen other composers do, namely Haydn. One of his most famous rondos is of this Scherzo-like quality that I hear in your rondo. That being the Gypsy Rondo from his Piano Trio no. 39 in G major.

Scherzo-like Rondo example

Thanks for listening, and for your comments!  It's funny you should mention that Haydn trio; I had initially thought of using the theme of the rondo for a piano trio before deciding to use it as the finale to this sonata, and I probably had that Haydn piece in the back of my mind.  And Beethoven was indeed the inspiration for putting more development-like material in the coda (in other pieces I've experimented with extending the idea from the 8th symphony of a second development and recapitulation).