Clair de Lune

Hello! I wanted to share my piece for solo piano, Clair de Lune, played by gamma1734 on youtube. There are a couple things in the first draft of the score I sent to the performer that weren't clear, so it's not played exactly as I intended.

I'd be happy to hear your opinions of it 🙂

François

Delightful, though the title is a bit overused I guess hehe. Gamma1734 does a great job despite it may not be exactly what you wanted. You know, no matter the score is more or less simple or complex, every performer will always put its own style, mark, or whatever on it. But from the "outside" perspective it sounds very good. Details like dynamics, tempo changes, articulation, etc. make this piece be a pleasure to listen to in my opinion, instead of a repetitive waltz-like piece.

Good job overall, two things I'd note though (which may be zero meaningful):

• The ending (in IV) is quite unexpected, are you sure of the portato articulation there in the apoggatiuras? Apart from that, Gamma does (purposefully or not) play it like acciacaturas, removing its (I believe) "ending" character.

• You are in Ab, C- yet you use sharps extensively, which again isn't anything necessarily bad (one may prefer to use sharps, naturals or flats according to a wide variety of reasons, all of them legit in my opinion) but there are parts where it may get a lil' confusing. For example, did you consciously prefer to use C# in the end in favour of Db? What about measures like 45, where you are in B in the right hand but perform Cb+ in the left hand?

Out of curiosity, did Gamma reach you by chance? 

I hope you keep sharing your work here. Again, it has been a pleasure to read and listen to your piece.

Kind regards :).

35 minutes ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Delightful, though the title is a bit overused I guess hehe. Gamma1734 does a great job despite it may not be exactly what you wanted. You know, no matter the score is more or less simple or complex, every performer will always put its own style, mark, or whatever on it. But from the "outside" perspective it sounds very good. Details like dynamics, tempo changes, articulation, etc. make this piece be a pleasure to listen to in my opinion, instead of a repetitive waltz-like piece.

Good job overall, two things I'd note though (which may be zero meaningful):

• The ending (in IV) is quite unexpected, are you sure of the portato articulation there in the apoggatiuras? Apart from that, Gamma does (purposefully or not) play it like acciacaturas, removing its (I believe) "ending" character.

• You are in Ab, C- yet you use sharps extensively, which again isn't anything necessarily bad (one may prefer to use sharps, naturals or flats according to a wide variety of reasons, all of them legit in my opinion) but there are parts where it may get a lil' confusing. For example, did you consciously prefer to use C# in the end in favour of Db? What about measures like 45, where you are in B in the right hand but perform Cb+ in the left hand?

Out of curiosity, did Gamma reach you by chance? 

I hope you keep sharing your work here. Again, it has been a pleasure to read and listen to your piece.

Kind regards :).

 

 

Thanks for your comment!
I agree with you, every performer will play it differently, and Gamma1734 is an excellent performer, and I really like his interpretations of the music. In fact, his channel is one of my favourites on youtube right now. I'm glad you enjoyed the piece 🙂

For the ending, indeed I meant it as an appoggiatura for the cadence aspect of it, but the acciaccatura seem to work as well. I'm not actually certain of the portato articulation though. What is it you thought of it?

Also I know the score is not well done at all, I don't know which one you were following, but the one in the youtube video is the first draft (the one that was really not clear), the pdf attached may be better, but it's still not really correct I think. I have to look into the proper way to write the score, I haven't really had much formal theory.

And I was the one to contact Gamma for my piece 🙂 Again thanks for your words, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

François

20 minutes ago, francoisfj said:

For the ending, indeed I meant it as an appoggiatura for the cadence aspect of it, but the acciaccatura seem to work as well. I'm not actually certain of the portato articulation though. What is it you thought of it?

Well since you think the acciacatura works you could go for that, but in my opinion, a legato apoggiatura emphasizing the rit. would work nice too. It's purely a matter of tastes, the portato apoggiatura may work as well, there would be a little difference between legato & portato + pedal so both may be even unnoticeable for a lot of listeners. 

26 minutes ago, francoisfj said:

Also I know the score is not well done at all, I don't know which one you were following, but the one in the youtube video is the first draft (the one that was really not clear), the pdf attached may be better, but it's still not really correct I think. I have to look into the proper way to write the score, I haven't really had much formal theory.

I have followed the one in the video and I read the pdf too. It may have some questionable choices but I wouldn't say it's bad written or anything like that. It's accurately written in my opinion, there are just some things like M45 that feel confusing but that's all. I sometimes struggle with these kind of details too, like, imagine you have an E major progression but your score is in F minor. Well then you either write E with all the sharps etc, etc, or you write Fb with flats and double flats, or do a mix in order to get the least possible accidentals which might be good or confusing depending on the performer... You could even change the key if the passage is long enough. So yeah, don't worry too much about those tiny details I found because in general terms the piece is properly written.

34 minutes ago, francoisfj said:

And I was the one to contact Gamma for my piece 🙂 Again thanks for your words, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Oh that's quite interesting indeed! I thought he chose them from some free websites but it seems it's not always the case. Glad he played yours and I had the opportunity to listen to it. I agree his channel is fantastic and the pieces he discovers are often very cool!

Kind regards!!