Sentimental Minuet in A Minor for Piano

Hello everyone! 

I composed a short minuet for piano and also created a saxophone quartet version, since I really think it fits the mood of the piece. You can hear the piano midi recording in the attached file and the saxophone quartet recording in the video. The score attached is the piano version (but both versions are 99% similar). 

These days I am practicing really easy piano pieces for improving my sight-reading and studying composition at the piano. After sight-reading a piece for a little bit I use it as a model for trying to compose something. This minuet was inspired by "minuet in a minor z. 649" by Purcell. I composed it with the following restrictions (most of them related to the A section, since in the B section I just started composing in a freer way). 

1. Like in Purcell piece, the motive of second bar is repeated twice in a row. So if we consider bar 1 as motive "a", and bar 2 as motive "b", each half of the A section consists on motives abb. 
2. First five measures with bass going down 8-b7-b6-5-3 and melody 1-2-1-2-3 (Phrygian Cadence to III). 
3. Accompaniment in left-hand exactly similar to Purcell's piece in first four measures.
4. Left-hand texture quite similar to Purcell's piece for the whole minuet.

After the fifth measure I just followed totally different paths, specially in section B, so the minuet is really different to the one it was inspired by. 

In addition, I want to use this short pieces to experiment a little bit, so I tried to be a little brave with chromatic tones and cross-relationships and, also, I tried moving from A to B section with an unconventional HC. Instead of cadencing in Emaj (V of A minor) the cadence is a HC in Dmin. So I cadence in the V of Dmin (Amaj) and then it goes directly to the A section in Amin. Not sure whether it works but I wanted to try.

Hope you enjoy it! Any feedback is welcome! 

Hi @JorgeDavid,

13 hours ago, JorgeDavid said:

I tried moving from A to B section with an unconventional HC. Instead of cadencing in Emaj (V of A minor) the cadence is a HC in Dmin. So I cadence in the V of Dmin (Amaj) and then it goes directly to the A section in Amin. Not sure whether it works but I wanted to try.

For me it works since I conceive the piece rather in a ternary structure with the first and last 8 bars as the A section, B section in between. The V/iv followed by a I sounds archaic to me which fits the English mood along with the false relations.

I’m just a bit off for the ending chord of b.10 and 12 since they end on a second inversion chord, which seems less in the style.

Thx for sharing this nice little minuet!

Henry

20 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hi @JorgeDavid,

For me it works since I conceive the piece rather in a ternary structure with the first and last 8 bars as the A section, B section in between. The V/iv followed by a I sounds archaic to me which fits the English mood along with the false relations.

I’m just a bit off for the ending chord of b.10 and 12 since they end on a second inversion chord, which seems less in the style.

Thx for sharing this nice little minuet!

Henry

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

The feedback was really helpful! I had my doubts about those two measures as I tried several solutions and none of them satisfied me, so in the end I just kept on the countermelody without moving the bass. But thanks to your feedback I revised those two measures. Now I move the bass to outline an augmented chord in b.10, and to smooth the transition from the second inversion minor chord to its first inversion major chord in b.12. I think it works better now!

Thank you so much! 

I think it is a very nice and beautiful piece.
At first it sounded a little slow for a minuet, but that's beside the point.
It has modulations that make it interesting. And the counterpoint sounds very nice.
The first time you hear that jump in the melody it's a bit of a surprise, in measure 6, but then it becomes structural.
What I would try to soften is the accentuated crescendo ending because it seems excessive to me, at least in this software performance.

20 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

I think it is a very nice and beautiful piece.
At first it sounded a little slow for a minuet, but that's beside the point.
It has modulations that make it interesting. And the counterpoint sounds very nice.
The first time you hear that jump in the melody it's a bit of a surprise, in measure 6, but then it becomes structural.

Thank you so much for listening and commenting @Luis Hernández!

I actually found out an important mistake thanks to your comment. I am not sure if you listened to the saxophone quartet or the piano version, but I realized in the piano version there was a mistake in m.6. The jump you talk about needs to be to C and in m.6 of the piano version it was accidentally written as D (and played with the midi). If you listened to the Saxophone version then you listened to the correct sound but still you helped me find about the error, thanks! Besides the mistake I also modified the counterpoint in every repetition of the main theme (since the theme was repeated three times I wanted to have different counterpoint for each case). 

20 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

What I would try to soften is the accentuated crescendo ending because it seems excessive to me, at least in this software performance.

Yes, I am having troubles with the midi crescendos for saxophones and piano, the changes of volume between "mf" and "f" are too large... I tried to fix to make it a little smoother. In any case, my plan is to practice it at the piano and update it with a score video of the piano version played by myself (of course that will probably take some time 😅).

Thank you so much for commenting!

That's right, that jump on the piano sounded strange to me.
In the sax quartet version it sounds very good. Actually this version is great.

5 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

That's right, that jump on the piano sounded strange to me.
In the sax quartet version it sounds very good. Actually this version is great.

Thank you @Luis Hernández, it really means a lot coming from you. I was quite worried about the chromatic harmonies since sometimes I have troubles when trying to use more adventurous harmonies so I am glad that in this piece it kind of worked out well!