nocturne Nocturne Nº6

Hi again!

I have been much more inactive than I often am last week. I am very exhausted right now, as I just finished my fourth sonata and every time I finish one it seems that my brain decides to go on vacation, but I've seen and listened to a few works published during the days I've not been paying attention, which is actually nice as I will not need to dig :). If I fall asleep today, I'll make sure to begin checking some of them tomorrow.  

Before that, let me present you my 6th nocturne, which is kind of "close" to the prior one. It was dedicated to my good friend (and possibly future pianist) Juan de Dios.
 

As always, I'll be glad to read anything, from a tiny comment to an in-depth review. I'll leave the PDF right here too: 53 - Nocturno Nº6.pdf
 

I (as always) prefer not to comment anything more about the piece itself and leave you to it. If you are interested into some other works of mine, you can always check my "About" page in this forum, which again turned out to be a very epic tool to organize one's content. 

Thank you so much in advance! (sorry for so little :P)

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

Heyyy @Omicronrg9,

I am waiting for your post here! Another cool piece marking your signature!

I love that 5/2 time signature at the beginning and turns to a 3/2. I think the 5/2 is like a hiccup and hard to speak out the feeling, and suddenly it seems like the awkward and struggling phrase becomes flowing and the feelinh can be more clearly expressed. The key change as well, from a hard, cold Eb minor to other keys with less flat, thus more "in touch" with emotions.

I don't know why, but the quick notes of triple semiquavers give me the impression of a Spanish Sarabande, even it's not in triple meter.

I love b.20, it really baits my expectation. Something warm like E flat major appears and all of a sudden vanished. Great tonality change here. The return to A sections becomes a little bit more agitated with thicker texture.

Nice change to 2/2 time in b.38 with more agitated volume and chords. They combine together to achieve a passionate effect! Nice staccato passage in b.46, I love it after a heavy passage! So funny and sacarstic like mocking one's own sadness! But it's short lived, as in b.54 passionate theme comes back, love the contrast! Nice modulation to C minor in b.71! So refreshing to hear this direct key! I find the last note of A flat in the left hand quite strange though, and I will prevent the false relationship by changing it to a A natural as well.

I fins the transition in b.78-80 abrupt though. But it can be cool to get back to Eb minor within a few chords, so great sudden return.

It becomes more direct in the last section in 3/2 time. Overall a well planned piece for me with cool harmonic and temporal effect! Great job Daniel! I definitely look forward to your fourth piano sonata!!

Henry

This is cool.  If it were my piece I would have used some meter changes in the beginning to make sure that the harmonic rhythm is aligned with the beginnings of new measures.  Like for example in bar 4, you don't resolve to Eb minor until the 2nd half note beat.  I would have changed the meter to 6/2 in the previous measure to fit those extra notes on Bb7 all into one bar.  This happens again in bar 8 and later on when you recapitulate that section.  Maybe you just kept it in 5/2 the whole time for convenience and consistency?

11 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Nice staccato passage in b.46, I love it after a heavy passage! So funny and sacarstic like mocking one's own sadness!

I love this passage too - I think it's my favorite part of this nocturne.  It almost reminds me of something out of Prokofiev's Piano Concerti.

This is a notation nitpick, but in bar 60 it would have been much better looking to use B naturals in the left hand instead of the Cb's in the key signature.  Thanks for sharing!

Hey there Daniel,

It's cool to hear new music (to me) from you. I want to do this review differently. First I'll mention things that I liked and loved, and then I'll get into things I would think about for future compositions.

The Good:

I really like the main theme. I know you're Spanish, but how much is Spanish guitar an influence for you? I frequently run through classical Spanish guitar pieces, and this is just drenched in that familiar sound to me. I like the simple theme with triplets of different varieties leading to sustained notes. There's also frequent use of arpeggios in that style, is this why I hear a lot of your music bearing this trait? 

You have a very cool part at bar 45, even transitioning well by keeping the triplets in the left hand. Very smooth. Bar 48 is what I'm dubbing "The Daniel" 😄 I really like it, and I hear you favoring this specific sound. It's awesome, and you should! Maybe I'll quote you one day doing that same thing with grace notes haha. That whole spot up unto bar 53 was my favorite part, I only wish it was longer and a more prominent section. 

I really like the left hand at bar 57, it's really cool and reminds be a little of Beethoven, as well as the diminished chord transition starting at bar 66.

Your piano samples sound much better to me than in the previous one I heard from you. I don't know how much you tinker with the sound samples, but I think the samples were much better executed this time around. 

I have the same complaint about the background being a bit too hard to see the notes on your video, but I used the score anyway and just listened, so not that big of a deal for me. 

As always, the ornamentations you put on the melody are very nice, you're always so good at decorating melody notes. That's a note I should pull from your playbook, I don't do it enough (or even think to 😕) 

The Not as Good:

Alright, just keep in mind a lot of what I'll mention is subjective. I know you wrote these a while ago (right?), as you're on Nocturne no.345235234 or something right now. But going back to the main melody, although I really liked it's "character", the constant quarter note, basically arpeggios, kinda wore on me after a while. I really didn't mind any of the triplet variations, the quarter note triplets were especially nice to my ears. I just wish there was something a bit more to the octaves in the left hand. 

I wasn't too convinced on the transition at bar 20, the octaves in the right hand or the lack of chords in the left. I would have given a bit more harmony, it just sounded very bare. You keep that texture all the way to bar 38, I just felt like it had run it's course way before that. Again, subjective

I really did like the parts from bars 45-70, but to me they felt like a jubilee of ideas rather than anything being coherent to what we had just heard. Maybe I missed it, but it sounded like idea after idea instead of material being developed. I liked the ideas, I just didn't get where they were all coming from. At bar 70, you set up a VERY nice transition back to the original material, but it was the slower quarter notes again in the left hand. I would have kept that going, you had such great momentum, to use the A theme material over that texture.  

I didn't care for the stop again at bars 78-80, it just felt a bit too stop and go. I'm guilty of this too, but it's much easier for me to hear in your music with a fresh take on a piece I've never heard than you could hear it after hearing this in your head 1000 times. 

I wasn't sold on the ending either. I liked the last two measures, but the rhythm with rests just wasn't my favorite. That's just preference though. 

The Verdict:

Overall, I think this is a nice addition to your set of Nocturnes. I hope I didn't sound too harsh, I wasn't trying to be. I'd rather give you honest feedback because I care about your presence here and your music, you're one of my favorites here, Daniel. As always, a very nicely composed piece, and one that I'm glad to have heard. You continue to surprise me with your cleverness in your ideas, and although this may be an older piece from you, I think it still holds weight and one you should be proud of. Well done, and thanks for sharing!

Oh nice, it's not suspicious at all that all staff reviewed this. I did definitely not bribe anyone here.

On 12/27/2022 at 10:45 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I don't know why, but the quick notes of triple semiquavers give me the impression of a Spanish Sarabande, even it's not in triple meter.

Since I'm no expert on Sarabandes, I don't really know the difference between a Spanish one and say, a German one, but thanks for the compliment (?), lol.

On 12/27/2022 at 10:45 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I fins the transition in b.78-80 abrupt though.

Yeah it doesn't convince me much either. There should be a rubato there at the very least, plus some dynamics, which would perhaps make those 2 bars less dry hence the transition less abrupt and unconvincing.

Thank you for your review Henry, it's always nice to check that a post I had forgotten I made got insightful reviews like yours.
 

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On 12/27/2022 at 10:32 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

This is cool

The forums? Oh yeah definitely! LOL.

On 12/27/2022 at 10:32 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Like for example in bar 4, you don't resolve to Eb minor until the 2nd half note beat.  I would have changed the meter to 6/2 in the previous measure to fit those extra notes on Bb7 all into one bar

Oh yeah that might be a consequence of myself not thinking "vertically" or something like that and minding more about the tempo structure in 5/2 (intro) 3/2 (main stuff) and 2/2 (complementary theme) (something that I might or might not have done in Noc. 2 for example). Now is where I could invent something regarding my very artistic intentions on evoking the natural asymmetry but conciliation of the sounds produced by the grand piano by opposing 4/2 vs. 5/2 but you know it's obviously a mistake in case nobody noticed.

On 12/27/2022 at 10:32 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

This is a notation nitpick, but in bar 60 it would have been much better looking to use B naturals in the left hand instead of the Cb's in the key signature.

Definitely. I'll fix that. I just found how to do it quick pressing J in MS3 days ago, lol.  Right now it's very ugly to read, thank you for noticing Peter.


Guys, thanks for the valuable feedback, really. It always makes me come back to my not so recent works and give them another go.

Kind regards ^^!

33 minutes ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Since I'm no expert on Sarabandes, I don't really know the difference between a Spanish one and say, a German one, but thanks for the compliment (?), lol.

There're only Spanish Sarabandes😅. Maybe I add Spanish because you are Spanish too!

It's nice of you to post your older works here! I just love them but sometimes I don't give good advices since I love them. I love how direct you are in your works, even if sometimes it becomes abrupt. That sometimes makes me forget about other things in your music and thus I cannot give a more valuable reply to you.

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

but how much is Spanish guitar an influence for you?

Gonna be honest: in a scale from 0 to 10, around -4. Next question, lol. Accordion Spanish music or popular Spanish music arranged for accordion is another story though.

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

There's also frequent use of arpeggios in that style, is this why I hear a lot of your music bearing this trait? 

Arpeggios, a great tool when you don't have a clue on what to do next. Okno: as how it happened with the previous nocturne, there's a predominant idea that tries to lead the piece and some complementary ones that stain it. In this case it happened that the main idea contained an arpeggio. In case of prior nocturnes, a mix of myself trying to constrain myself to easier passages without being overly repetitive (and maybe failing sometimes) and what I just mentioned.

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I have the same complaint about the background being a bit too hard to see the notes on your video, but I used the score anyway and just listened, so not that big of a deal for me. 

I ended up sometimes keeping that up and sometimes discarding it. In this case, this video was actually the first one with which I tried that, and then I applied it on the arrangement I did and which I posted here a while ago. Next nocturnes do not have that up to... 12th I think? It's just decoration, I don't really intend that the average spectator read that, and here I'll always be attaching the pdf.

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

But going back to the main melody, although I really liked it's "character", the constant quarter note, basically arpeggios, kinda wore on me after a while.

I'd say this is myself composing my way towards a more satisfying development of certain ideas. I get what you say. Friendly advice though: the next 4 ones are likely worse than this one :S.

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Nocturne no.345235234

Good to see you're up to date 😎.
 

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I wasn't too convinced on the transition at bar 20, the octaves in the right hand or the lack of chords in the left. I would have given a bit more harmony, it just sounded very bare. You keep that texture all the way to bar 38, I just felt like it had run it's course way before that. Again, subjective

Yeah in this case it was fully intentional. Guess that it sounds better inside my mind than inside yours, but hell we cannot agree on everything or we would be doing the very same pieces and that'd be hella strange wouldn't it? Can I be in the minimalist club now? Lol.
 

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I would have kept that going, you had such great momentum, to use the A theme material over that texture.  

Ah, I believe I know what you mean. It's true, I had a great chance to make an empowered A but I fully returned to it instead. Regarding M45-70:
♫ 54-62 is just an idea based on "the contrast of the contrast" as as you can check the "contrasting" idea ends in M45 and instead returning rapidly to A in, I don't know, 8 measures, I took a longer (and maybe less fruitful) detour by varying the transition between "B" and "A" and approaching it more aggressively which is basically the "indirect" crescendo (not just on dynamics): 


B = B^2 always, or in other words, "B of B", "the contrast of the contrast". Perhaps I went too far with those last measures that end up into diminished chords.

On 12/28/2022 at 6:13 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I wasn't sold on the ending either. I liked the last two measures, but the rhythm with rests just wasn't my favorite.

I struggled with those last two Ms anyway, they had an ornament I erased in the very last moment.

I am always pleasured to receive your feedback and thus be able to think and reflect on your criticism. I hope it keeps being honest as it has been, for this is the only one that does serve in my opinion. Thank you again.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

12 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

There're only Spanish Sarabandes😅.

Is it then like the Passacaglia which is inherited from a popular Spanish dance? I thought there were Sarabandes from different countries because the most famous one is likely from G.F. Haendel who, as I at least suspect, wasn't spanish, hehe.

Kind regards Henry 🙂

Yeah sarabande actually has a Spanish origin. I check that on Wiki and luckily I'm not wrong. I remember when I learned about Baroque Suites is was always German Allemande, French Courante, Spanish Sarabandecand English Gigue and it's quite subconcious of me to say "Spanish sarabande," haha. Of course the dances later on are more under composers' influence, like Bach's English Suites have nothing really English in it.