Prelude No.7 - Live Performance by Henry Ng

It's that time again. 

I may have gotten weird with the score.

Nice, catchy piece.

Bloomin' difficult to play (not that I've tried). I liked the up in the sky bit followed by everything tumbling to bass (bars 16/17/18).

I reckon Billy Mayerl players would have problems doing this justice but for this style it's effectively a study and a worthwhile prelude in the traditional sense.

Great.

Having watched almost nothing of South Park, I don't feel I'm qualified to say anything here.

But I know good music when I hear it (or so I tell myself), and this is good music. Fun and soulful... real bluesy feel. I give it two thumbs way, way up!

Hey Vince @Thatguy v2.0,

I've almost forgotten this piece lol!

On 4/13/2023 at 3:13 PM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I may have gotten weird with the score.

Well ironically I feel like this prelude is where you show your freest self lol! You are really free flowing in this one and the imagination is the highest comparing to the previous six preludes since here you are without any constraints of styles. Very attractive jazzy style here which I can never compose like this (since I am always too serious in my music  ! I enjoy your words in your score even though I cannot read them all! I do think this will be difficult to play especially I'm not used to playing jazzy style pieces at all! Thanks for sharing and waiting for no.8!

Henry

Excellent!

But...was Schoenberg on the right track?

And was Bernstein when he asked "Whither music?" via his view of Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question"?

On 4/13/2023 at 3:45 AM, Quinn said:

Nice, catchy piece.

Bloomin' difficult to play (not that I've tried). I liked the up in the sky bit followed by everything tumbling to bass (bars 16/17/18).

I reckon Billy Mayerl players would have problems doing this justice but for this style it's effectively a study and a worthwhile prelude in the traditional sense.

Great.

Thanks for checking it out Quinn

I knew this would be the hardest one, and hopefully it's the benchmark of difficulty for the set. I play the first half all the time at the piano, but the second section might be a doozy.

On 4/13/2023 at 7:28 AM, Tónskáld said:

Having watched almost nothing of South Park, I don't feel I'm qualified to say anything here.

But I know good music when I hear it (or so I tell myself), and this is good music. Fun and soulful... real bluesy feel. I give it two thumbs way, way up!

Fortunately South Park has nothing to do with the music, It's merely the voice of how I imagined all the expressions. I'm glad you liked it, blues music is my jam. Thanks for stopping by!

18 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Well ironically I feel like this prelude is where you show your freest self lol! You are really free flowing in this one and the imagination is the highest comparing to the previous six preludes since here you are without any constraints of styles. Very attractive jazzy style here which I can never compose like this (since I am always too serious in my music  ! I enjoy your words in your score even though I cannot read them all! I do think this will be difficult to play especially I'm not used to playing jazzy style pieces at all! Thanks for sharing and waiting for no.8!

Henry

Thanks, glad you like it Henry! It was fun to take something I had already been playing and give it a bit of form and a title. Ah reckon ah cerd healp ya wit da readin 'n sech

27 minutes ago, AKAChristopher said:

Excellent!

But...was Schoenberg on the right track?

And was Bernstein when he asked "Whither music?" via his view of Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question"?

Thanks for listening Christopher. Once again, I'm not smart enough to understand what you're saying 😄 , but glad you dropped by!

On 4/14/2023 at 11:01 PM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

what you're saying

why re-hash the musical constructs that were established over the recent and not so recent past? schoenberg came to the conclusion that old forms and ideas had been exhausted and that new 'paths' should be sought. sounds good. then again, not everyone has experienced those old forms in full. if someone today can write a piece of music as artistically valid and interesting as, say, Beethoven, then perhaps today's listener may as well listen to that instead of that old master? whatever your conclusion on this may be, i ask you this: is the world a stage upon which we are only players? to what end is it that any of us exist?

On 4/16/2023 at 6:17 PM, AKAChristopher said:

i ask you this: is the world a stage upon which we are only players? to what end is it that any of us exist?

On the contrary sir, the stage is merely a looking glass for the masses. There is more to the player than meets the eye. 

The score is just epic, 🤠. What a rodeo of a prelude! Truly unexpected, truly enjoyed.

 

On 4/17/2023 at 2:17 AM, AKAChristopher said:

schoenberg came to the conclusion that old forms and ideas had been exhausted and that new 'paths' should be sought.

Yeah poor Arnold, when you win the game of harmony the feeling of emptiness is just unbearable, or it must be cause I am nowhere near that. He was mathematically wrong though. Old forms and ideas would not be exhausted in a humanly comprehensible time, but it's perhaps our limitations in the complexity of these old forms that keep constraining us and led some to do very strange stuff that one may like or not, like this prelude of Vince and much more daring (and potentially harmful to the eye and ear) stuff.

Coming back to the topic, I loved the initial cadenza and the overall mood of the entire piece. It's fresh, but a bit dense on the low register. It's animated, but not sure if after this we can still say there pieces were meant to be easy. I will let our pianist of preference and reference @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu to judge this. A slow theme of this kind would be very welcome if you ask me.

In summary, one of my favourites, though I may make a full detour once you publish them all in order to make a veredict.

Kind regards!!

16 minutes ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Coming back to the topic, I loved the initial cadenza and the overall mood of the entire piece. It's fresh, but a bit dense on the low register. It's animated, but not sure if after this we can still say there pieces were meant to be easy. I will let our pianist of preference and reference @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu to judge this. A slow theme of this kind would be very welcome if you ask me.

Well I'll judge more on this when I start playing this piece since playing is quite different from looking at the score. But in the meantime I'm still on Vince's 4th prelude so you have to wait haha!

Henry

@Omicronrg9, I still remember this, and it's in the back of my mind as I continue to write these:

"BEWARE, for I began the same way "I want to make them easy" with my nocturnes and it surely didn't last long, lol. I also did plan to do like 10 or something at the beginning, BEWARE of that too."

Well, the number will be 12 for sure, but I agree this one seemed like the hardest. I've toned it back a bit for the next two, but you're right, it's very easy to make them more difficult as I go

At any rate, thanks for checking this out. The rootin' tootin' score was an after thought to the music, but I'm glad you found it entertaining. 

It was a bit heavy in the lower register for the second half, I wanted some wild bar room brawl type of vibe. Hopefully that came across okay. 😄

P.S. POST MORE MUSIC

4 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Well I'll judge more on this when I start playing this piece since playing is quite different from looking at the score. But in the meantime I'm still on Vince's 4th prelude so you have to wait haha!

😮

You are the resident piano aficionado! Always bug you with piano playability questions 😄 

The amazing Henry is back at it again. Thanks so much buddy, I love your take on blues music!

12 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

The amazing Henry is back at it again. Thanks so much buddy, I love your take on blues music!

I'm going to admit that this is a harder one (than the previous preludes), as you can see there're some wrong notes in the recording lol. I am not deeply immersed in the blue styles so I'm finding the right rhythm and colour of it at the beginning. To be honest, I am playing this rather with my Bach instinct with how good the voice leading and the use of register is especially in the second half (which is more difficult!). You have to link all those voices and change the colours in different registers like those in Bach Cello Suites in my opinion. For the second quick part I have to clap the rhythm first before playing and treat my hands as drum sticks rather than fingers to play them out. I'm happy I try this one out and the recording is not so bad! This is for sure very funny music to play and I enjoy trying a style I don't always have chance to play!

Henry