Lullaby in A Major for Celesta

Hello everyone!

I share a piece for celesta that I just composed. It is my first composition in a year since I have no much time to compose or study anymore. Instead, I am trying to learn piano and this piece was inspired by the first few pieces of the "Album for the Young" by Schumann. Those pieces are mainly based on two homophonic voices (with the same rhythm) and a pedal middle voice ringing the fifth or the root (most of the time).   

Any comment or feedback is more than welcome!

Thanks for listening and hope you enjoy it!

Hi @JorgeDavid,

I like the sound of celesta and this one is a simplistic and lovable piece! This will be a great lullaby for babies!

14 hours ago, JorgeDavid said:

Instead, I am trying to learn piano and this piece was inspired by the first few pieces of the "Album for the Young" by Schumann.

Yeah this does remind me the simplistic texture there. It's amazing Schumann does with the counterpoint and voice leading there despite the thin texture.

For me sometimes it hard to write for two homophonic lines since it can get dry and uninteresting sometimes, but here that's not the case. Except in b.4 last two beats and the ending chord of the first section.I think you can insert a third there (G# and C# respectively) to attain a richer harmonic chords there.

For b.16 that G# and B chord in the right hand you may just write it with two voices, and the B will not need to split to two quavers and tied for a crotchet.

14 hours ago, JorgeDavid said:

It is my first composition in a year since I have no much time to compose or study anymore.

That's great news! Hopefully you will squeeze some time for composing after this!

Thx for sharing!

Henry

Thank you so much for listening and for commenting, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu! 🙂 

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I like the sound of celesta and this one is a simplistic and lovable piece! This will be a great lullaby for babies!

I am glad you liked it! You are right that it totally sounds like a lullaby. After you pointed that out I realized some curious facts I had not realized consciously. Every phrase each couple of bars starts with an A note in one of the two main voices. The section A always has the ascending scale A-B-C#-D played in one of the voices. I guess this repetition, together with the constinuous pedal notes and the sound of the celesta give the piece that relaxing/hypnotic lullaby feeling. 

I did not like having to call the piece as "Moderato" so I actually changed it to "Lullaby". Sounds much better, thanks!

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For me sometimes it hard to write for two homophonic lines since it can get dry and uninteresting sometimes, but here that's not the case. Except in b.4 last two beats and the ending chord of the first section.I think you can insert a third there (G# and C# respectively) to attain a richer harmonic chords there.

For b.16 that G# and B chord in the right hand you may just write it with two voices, and the B will not need to split to two quavers and tied for a crotchet.

Thanks for the feedback too. You are right, I had tested those options before but, on the first listening, I had dedided to keep those parts thin. However, now, after carefully listening to both options, I think your suggestions are actually better, so I fixed them!

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That's great news! Hopefully you will squeeze some time for composing after this!

I hope so too 😢 I am trying to learn piano only for making the composition process faster but, considering that I am still struggling with the first 10 pieces of the "Album for the Young", the process is slow and kind of hard since I also do not have much time for practicing and when I practice I'd rather compose or read some scores 😅 The origin of this little piece was actually the first bar of the section B in minor, which was composed completely at the piano (first thing I ever composed at the piano instead of directly through the computer) so I guess learning piano might come handy in the long term and it will be worth the struggle.

Thanks for commenting and glad you liked it! 

Hi @JorgeDavid!

It is indeed a very good and enjoyable piece!

I really like its simplicity and childish mood, maybe is it too short? I think that a longer version of this piece would be even more gratificant!

I really like the VII7/V in b.4, as most of us would expect a D# not an C!  Also, I wouldn't do the rit. at b.4, it is yet too early for that, a quaver union between b4 and b5 would be great.

I think that the Am section is maybe too short, just 4 bars. As Henry said, this types of textures get boring easily, a more complex bass line in B section (or some kind of counterpoint) will help to keep it interesting through all the piece.

Hope I helped!

Samuel

Thank you so much for listening and for commenting, @Samuel_vangogh! 😄 

7 hours ago, Samuel_vangogh said:

It is indeed a very good and enjoyable piece!

I really like its simplicity and childish mood, maybe is it too short? I think that a longer version of this piece would be even more gratificant!

I really like the VII7/V in b.4, as most of us would expect a D# not an C!  Also, I wouldn't do the rit. at b.4, it is yet too early for that, a quaver union between b4 and b5 would be great.

I am really glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for commenting about the ritardando. I was not planning to do a ritardando there, but, instead, I just wanted to slow-down the xtempo a little bit so it seemed like the virtual instrument does give some emphasis to the unexpected harmony. But I overdid it 😅. I just modified it so the tempo change is much more subtle. Thank you!

7 hours ago, Samuel_vangogh said:

I think that the Am section is maybe too short, just 4 bars.

 I totally agree with you! While listening to the piece, what bothered me the most was how fast the E major half-cadence arrived in the B section and how little time was left to enjoy the beginning of part B (which is my favourite part of the piece). Since you commented the same, I tried to extend and make a decent contrasting section. Since I liked the melody of bars 9~12 I just opted to repeat them by modifying the harmony a little bit. I kind of understand this part of the development, and might try to modify some little things as I see fit.

Then, instead of doing a definitive half-cadence I add some harmonies around the E chord before the half-cadence. Those are bars 17~19. Honestly, I have no idea what is going on in those bars. I composed them almost entirely by ear. I came up with a melody and bass I enjoyed and added the middle voice, but did not totally understand what is the harmony behind it. And I also realize that there are constant paralell octaves between melody and bass. But it sounds kind of okay. I tried to do some kind of Frigian cadence to E but.. I am not sure if it worked 🤣.

Contrasting and developing sections always come to hard to me and I am never sure about them, so feel free to let me know if you think it is a tasteless addition to the original piece! Also, since the development section became quite larger, I ended up repeating the whole A section at the end. Felt that after a long development section repeating just the last 4 bars was kind of disapointing. 

7 hours ago, Samuel_vangogh said:

As Henry said, this types of textures get boring easily, a more complex bass line in B section (or some kind of counterpoint) will help to keep it interesting through all the piece.

Hope I helped!

I agree with that too. However, in this case I wanted to keep the same voice to voice counterpoint (without diminution in any of the voices) to create the "hyptonic" and "repetitive" effect in the piece. So in the development section I tried to keep the interest mostly through the harmony and by repeating motives previously heard.

Your comment helped a lot, thank you so much!

This is very very nice!
 If I should give some feedback, it may be that the harmony at bars 17 to 19 is a little sloppy. Each of these are nice and interesting by themselves, but together they don't make a lot of sense. I think it boils down to that C natural in bar 18 not getting resolved.
Anyway, I think it's quite a solid composition.

Unrelated question: What do you do to embed youtube videos? (I'm very new to this forum)

Saludos!

Thanks for listening and for your feedback, @Fiddeou! I am glad you liked it!

4 hours ago, Fiddeou said:

 If I should give some feedback, it may be that the harmony at bars 17 to 19 is a little sloppy. Each of these are nice and interesting by themselves, but together they don't make a lot of sense. I think it boils down to that C natural in bar 18 not getting resolved.
Anyway, I think it's quite a solid composition.

You are right. Those are the bars I am most conscious of and I am thinking about better ways to smooth it. But I had not though about your option which is the most obvious one. If I continue the semitonal descend and resolve the C to B, and the E to D# (and maybe modify the melody a bit) the B chord will work great and go to E much smoother. I will test some options at night after work!

4 hours ago, Fiddeou said:

Unrelated question: What do you do to embed youtube videos? (I'm very new to this forum)

You just need to paste the link in the comment. In my case, as soon as I paste any youtube URL link, the video gets automatically embedded into the comment. Try pasting the youtube URL link in the comment (do not use the "link" button from the toolbar as that does not embed the videos). 

Gracias y un saludo!