Harvey0905 Posted August 7 Share Posted August 7 (edited) 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! Spoiler Context My first experiment with sonata-allegro form was when writing my first piano sonata in E minor/major, which I worked on for a good portion of 2023, and at an agonisingly slow pace. I finished the first movement with a slapped-together ending and left the scherzo movement half-baked. In the end, what I had left was a fairly-bloated single movement with fatalistic harmonies. In an attempt to cleanse myself of its somewhat shoddy quality, I set to work on another brighter-sounding piano sonata in April and essentially completed it in July, and this time deliberately in one movement. I wrote about 80% of it at the piano and think the rest should be playable; I'm currently working on learning it, though the development section is giving me some difficulties 🙂 Musical analysis INTRODUCTION (b. 1-10) Fragments of the 1st theme float fuzzily over a C pedal point. The 'unfolding' motif appears in b. 9-10 and leads directly into the 1st theme. EXPOSITION 1st theme (b. 11-43): A sprightly dance in F major that builds up to a small climax in b. 37. The arpeggiated textures are taken from Scriabin's 7th Sonata. 2nd theme (b. 44-66): The melody, now a quasi-reminiscence in B♭ major, wanders without ever returning to the tonic. As it reaches its close, it fizzles into a series of dominant chords, before the 'unfolding' motif materialises and pulls the piece towards the development. DEVELOPMENT (b. 67-121) In true developmental fashion, both themes are shunted rapidly through different keys. The 2nd theme outlines b. 69-70 and b. 73-74, the 1st theme is developed in b. 77-84, and the 2nd returns briefly for b. 85-88. Following a transposed repetition of the material from b. 67-74 is a short episode flittering in and out of limpid consciousness. The 'unfolding' motif then tumbles down a lengthy runway towards the recapitulation. RECAPITULATION 1st theme (b. 122-149): The original theme is recapitulated verbatim. However, the material originally building up to the climax in b. 37 remains in F major and continues to expand, leading directly into the 2nd theme in doppio movimento. 2nd theme (b. 150-181): A majestic restatement of the 2nd theme in F major above a churning left-hand, pointing to a cadence in G minor. CODA (b. 182-190) The momentum conserved from the three chords of b. 179-181 propel fragments of the 1st theme upwards, resembling the material from the introduction. In an ecstatic flurry, the harmony spirals towards a final ♭II-V-I in F major. Edited August 8 by Harvey0905 Fixed formatting and corrected volume of recording. MP3 Play / pause JavaScript is required. 0:00 0:00 volume > next menu Piano Sonata No. 2 > next PDF Piano Sonata No. 2 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterthePapercomPoser Posted August 8 Share Posted August 8 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harvey0905 Posted August 10 Author Share Posted August 10 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! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jqh73o Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 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 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harvey0905 Posted August 12 Author Share Posted August 12 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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