Sonata Nº2 in F Major: "Garden of Suns"

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to share a piece that I recently finished. If you'd like some context and a musical breakdown, feel free to pop out the spoilers; if not, have a read/listen and let me know what you think. I'd like to get some feedback on this before I polish up the score!

Hello @Harvey0905 and welcome back to the forum!

What a wonderful impressionistic piece!  On the whole I felt like your rendition was too quiet and I sometimes was struggling to hear what you wrote.  If you were able to play this piece it would be quite an achievement - I'd say its difficulty is almost on par with Ravel's Ondine.  I do have to say that my favorite part of the piece is by far the funny and elaborate and ingenious ending where the key of F major appears (or at least I perceive it this way) as a very surprising harmony in comparison to what came right before.  I thought that you might have saved the resolution to F major till the very end, avoiding that key for the whole rest of the movement, but a quick perusal through the score proved me wrong!  But you do seem to play around a lot with ii - V's in this piece, measures 182 - 187 being a great example.  And then you surprise the listener with a final IV - V - I in the home key - brilliant!  Thanks for sharing this sonata and good luck with learning it!

Thanks for your comments @PeterthePapercomPoser! 

Yeah, bringing audio up to the right volume seems to be a persistent issue with me, especially with tracks and YouTube videos. I usually err on the quieter side in case I blow somebody's eardrums, so hopefully I've corrected the MP3 to be more audible this time around.

I'm also glad that the ending and my predilection for ii-V's stood out to you. I indeed tried to make the first and second themes avoid the tonic for as long as possible, mainly to douse the music in some forward momentum and partially because it sounds good. The fact that the second theme modulates from its tonic I to a cadence pointing towards the supertonic was entirely by accident when I was writing it, so when it came to the coda I needed to find a quick fix to move everything back into F major. Naturally, D⁷ → Gm⁷ ↔ C⁹ came easily enough; however, I did want the last two chords to almost blend together into a harmonic cloud of smoke so that quick ii-V alternation melts away.

Once I get around to recording it I'll be sure to post a reply to this post! 

I see you like Scriabin, you have quoted (or at least I think they are quotes) the third, fourth, fifth, seventh and ninth.

The beginning with low tremolos like the fifth

The first theme sounds a lot like the fourth’s second movement

As you have mentioned, the arpegiated texture and even the marking etcinelant comes from the seventh

The repeated notes, specially the ones around bar 74 3:00 have similar rhythms as the ones in the ninth

The leading to the recapitulation of the second theme in a majestic way sounds like the reintroducing of the melody from the third movement of the third at the end of the fourth movement

I think it is fine to quote composers sometimes, and specially in this case is justified because it is in most cases a different style.

Are my conjectures too far from what you thought when you were composing this?

Thanks for sharing 

Manuel

Haha some very astute observations @Jqh73o! 90% of what I play and listen to is probably Scriabin (slowly weaning off him, however). I made some effort to suppress his influence to see if I could let my personal compositional style roam free, but it looks like might've been a bit too obvious.

In terms of quotation, I'm usually quite prudent with what material I choose to pluck and why, but a lot of the time things will weasel their way in subconsciously. The only Scriabin sonatas (is sonate the right plural?) I intentionally referenced were the 4th and the 7th, as you did point out. Of course, I'm a big fan of his majestic climax-restatements, so perhaps I was indirectly inspired by the Allegro de concerto, Sonatas 3-5 and the Fantasy in B minor. I was actually thinking of Kapustin's Sonata 2 when I wrote the repeated-note passages, mainly from the first and second movements, but I can see the resemblance to the 9th Sonata.

The introduction with the tremolos and the first theme are both proper references to the opening of Scriabin's Symphony 1. I recall noodling around at the piano with Winkler's transcription when I improvised bars 35-38, which was the first section of this sonata that I came up with.