Diabolique for Piano

I present to you an old piece that I started many many years ago that was written into the sequencer.  I copied the piece onto paper and extended it in my usual way, by writing some variations.  Let me know whether that was the best way to finish the piece or not.  There's just the theme and three variations.  For me, the piece was a fun way to play around with cross relations and polytonality.  I hope I used the cross relations to create surprise and harmonic interest.  Let me know what you think!

Perhaps my ears or the time of day but I couldn't distinguish something lifted out of the sequencer and developed further on paper. Presumably you moved it back into notation or daw. If you played it in on a keyboard you're a far more accomplished pianist than !. (Although it may be possible to input it at a more comfortable rate then up the tempo as needed).

It came across as a capricious piece, bravura, brilliant - and a wrist-acher with all those parallel 6ths. I have no comment on it musically as it's what you want. But I noticed the occasional interjections of accented chords (examples bars 6 and 12) which seemed reminiscent of how you terminated each variation in your recent 11 Variations. Certainly comes with surprises although cross-relationships? I'm not up on poly-anything in music so I can't comment there. The only cross-relationship I know of is one between a music professor acquaintance and one of his students (who happens to lodge with us)!

Diabolique is indeed an appropriate title! Are you intending to add more variations?

8 hours ago, Quinn said:

The only cross-relationship I know of is one between a music professor acquaintance and one of his students (who happens to lodge with us)!

Does that happen to be an ethical or unethical cross-relationship?  🤨

8 hours ago, Quinn said:

Diabolique is indeed an appropriate title! Are you intending to add more variations?

Thanks!  I don't know what other variations it is possible to write just for solo piano, but maybe if I were to write for piano and orchestra ... ???

2 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Does that happen to be an ethical or unethical cross-relationship?

"Cross" as in miffed. They agree on one point - she doesn't like the curriculum and he doesn't like teaching it. 😄

Have you pondered a more sedate variation? (Which would probably mean two. The swing variation is already more relaxed so a slower one would have to be added on the end - which in turn would mean a more demanding finale.) 'With orchestra' is a good idea but I hear it more as a piano concertante with the orchestra being an accompaniment. Sort of Rachmaninov's Variations on Paganini. 

I think this sounds super cool! Love the chaos and tension throughout. Despite my lack of piano skills, from what I know about piano this looks ridiculously hard. 

For some of those accented chord slams that appear, I know the midi plays it like a sforzando, but you should write it in if you want it played that accented/dynamically different while being performed. Right now, they jump in dynamic and really stand out. Unless you do not like that, writing in a sfz on those notes would help a performer.

The canon had one weird spot when the bass takes over after that dissonant slam (sorry for lack of measure numbers I don't want to find it in the score). It sounded cool in the right hand part, but a bar later when the left hand does it in the bass register on the & of the beat it sounded super strange to me.

Your ostinato movement in the bass leading into the right hands triplet run into the melody is always super cool and satisfying to hear. 

An awesome little work!

Evan

This piece is super fun to listen and full of humour! It sounds like a mixture between Prokofiev and some crazy Stravinsky. Also the distorted jazzy section was super unexpected and refreshing. Very cool stuff. 🙂 The ending is cool but I would have extended that idea a bit.

Love the harmonies! It reminds me too of a piece of Ligeti, forgot which one. Hmm try to find and add later. Great humorous work! Do you have someone to play it for you? Maybe record?

7 hours ago, Jan-Peter said:

Love the harmonies! It reminds me too of a piece of Ligeti, forgot which one. Hmm try to find and add later. Great humorous work! Do you have someone to play it for you? Maybe record?

Well, I play piano so maybe if I took the time to learn it someday on my old dilapidated piano that's gathering dust in the living room!  (LoL)  Although I don't know if I'm up to the challenge since it

On 1/17/2022 at 11:43 AM, Eickso said:

looks ridiculously hard.