Romance in E Major

This is one of my first compositions and it creates a calmed and entrancing atmosphere while having a sweet melody, trying to compose like in the romantic period.

It has a melodic motif that consists on E rising to B (1st degree to 5th degree) each of them occupying half of the 6/8 bar, and then it continues differently in each of the phrases where it appears. This motif will be starting just as single notes, but as the piece progresses it will get to octaves, the octaves will help it stand out and will give this melody even more power and a triumphant approach.

Accompanying this melody there is a virtuoso ostinato that consists of thirds and sometimes fourths that move through the keyboard like a sort of fake arpeggio.

Romance in E Major.pdf

(The “recording” is made by a computer)

I hope you enjoyed it and I am very welcome to accept critics.

If you want to listen more of my music, here is the link to my flat.io account, where I have more music that I created.

https://flat.io/@jqh73o 

Good material.
There are two things that, I think, muddy the sonority: 1) the long duration of the sostenuto pedal in relation to the amount of notes sounded and their velocity, perhaps shortening the pedals... 2) In the low register there are very close intervals.

Hello @Jqh73o,

Welcome to the forum!

The piece as @Luis Hernández said feature interesting sonority. The repeating pattern can be very difficult to play with under this tempo and it makes the piece Chopin etude like. Some of the places will be quite unfeasible to play with when there are crossing hands within close intervals or overlapping of tones, like b.4, 10,  and many places, Exchange of hands in b.6 can be very difficult or even not feasible. Moments like b.59 LH is almost impossible to play with. This piece would really need a virtuoso to play with, or maybe some places are not feasible to play with. Have you tried this out in your piano?

The high E in b.6 is not sounded as high in the recording but as E4. 

The octave sign after b.74 can be cancelled since the notes are not too high.

Thx for sharing and joining the forum!

Btw I enjoy your C# minor Lament more since it's in my favourite key haha!

Henry

@Luis Hernández, Gracias por el comentario. Intenté crear una atmósfera de sonido usando mayoritariamente el primer, cuarto y quinto grado (los grados mayores), pero creo que como tú dices, me he pasado con el pedal y ha quedado demasiado “caótico” o “sucio”

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, Thank you for the feedback, I agree with you, indeed the piece is very difficult and it was intended to be virtuoso, but I think that with a big enough hand, with an appropriate fingering and not maintaining always a legato, it is playable (even though, very difficult as you said)

In bar six what happened was that I mistakenly swiped my phone screen before exporting both the pdf and the mp3. When I listened to the piece to check, I noticed that I mistakenly changed that note, so I sorted out the audio, but I forgot to change the pdf, (now it is sorted out)

Thank you for telling me about the unnecessary octave sign

And thank you for listening to more of my music 

@Jqh73o

Sí, eso te darás cuenta. Cuando en el piano hay "muchas notas", especialmente en registros bajos y con notas no diatónicas (de paso), hay que acortar el pedal porque el efecto es muy reverberante y puede ser confuso.

Y por otro, en el registro bajo conviene separar las notas al menos una quinta. Hay algunas tablas para eso.

Yes, you will notice that. When there are "many notes" on the piano, especially in low registers and with non-diatonic (pitch) notes, you have to shorten the pedal because the effect is very reverberant and can be confusing.

And on the other hand, in the low register it is convenient to separate the pitches at least a fifth. There are some charts for that.

Never in any piano music have I ever seen the contrabass clef used:

 Besides the fact that it is just like the treble clef but two octaves lower, it seems like an unnecessary ornament when the rest of the piece is written using the regular grand staff with a regular bass clef.

Now to the music - the melody is quite diatonic.  Romanticism on the other hand is usually known for its liberal chromaticism to create emotion.  I think this piece is a good start towards your goal and is a pretty good specimen for one of your first compositions.  I think studying how you can inject more different kinds of chromatic harmony into your music would be a great avenue towards making your music more Romantic and emotional.  For example - augumented 6th chords and their relation to secondary dominants and tritone substitution is a great study in understanding Romantic chromaticism (also - check out the "Tristan Chord").  Thanks for sharing this and good luck!

Hi @PeterthePapercomPoser, thank you for commenting on my piece

About the contrabass clef, it was a mistake and now it is solved.

The chromatic harmony sounds pretty interesting, do you recommend me any website/video/book to learn more about it?

(this first video is a bit basic but sets the stage for the next one I think)