"3:00 a.m. thoughts" (My best piece below 2 minutes)

(Sorry for the viola clef mistake...)

Hello again. After 2-3 months with a considerable mental block I managed to start doing some progress and last night I composed a piece with this newly found creativity. This piece is a reflection of some of the feelings I haven't been unable to express in the past weeks.

I wasn't expecting to create it, I just sat down and started playing with some harmonies. But luckily it turned out to be one of my most expressive pieces in my opinion, even if it is just a miniature.

I hope you enjoy it!

Hey Ivan! @Ivan1791

I really really really enjoy this. I love how you travel to different keys and harmonies before confriming the tonic of my fav. C sharp minor. The first chord, even it’s a C sharp minor chord with a D#, doesn’t feel like a tonic at all, and it moves further and further away with beautiful harmonic progression: a beautiful G minor seventh in b.2, D major plus minor seventh in b.3, augmented seventh in b.4, then a half/full diminished C# chord in b.5 in a local climax. After that C sharp minor starts becoming more and more apparent. The voice leading is so smooth, and when it gets unsmooth as in b.5 a tritone it’s so goddamn expressive like the Mahler 10th. If before b.10 the sadness is somewhat prevented by dissonant chords, after b.10 it’s profoundly expressed in the most direct, beautiful and tragic way. You’re so talented to write this out that I somewhat hope you can be less talented so you would be less painful, because for me I hear tremendous pain in it. I wanna congrats on the musical genius in the piece but I wanna cry with you instead Ivan. You act like Christ who crucified himself in order to bless us with this beautiful music. Thank you Ivan.

Henry

Quite an emotional piece.
Despite its brevity it sounds “progressive”, a bit in the Wagnerian idea of pulling forward all the time.

Very beautiful Ivan, this has so much emotional depth wrapped up in it for such a short piece. Well done!

Hey @Ivan1791!

Wonderful writing!  The harmonies are quite neo-romantic and reflect well in the bleak but yet contemplative soundscape that is perfect for the string orchestra.  Great job and I am hoping that these short pieces of yours are but warm-ups for longer and more developed works!  Thanks for sharing.

On 3/30/2025 at 4:29 PM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hey Ivan! @Ivan1791

I really really really enjoy this. I love how you travel to different keys and harmonies before confriming the tonic of my fav. C sharp minor. The first chord, even it’s a C sharp minor chord with a D#, doesn’t feel like a tonic at all, and it moves further and further away with beautiful harmonic progression: a beautiful G minor seventh in b.2, D major plus minor seventh in b.3, augmented seventh in b.4, then a half/full diminished C# chord in b.5 in a local climax. After that C sharp minor starts becoming more and more apparent. The voice leading is so smooth, and when it gets unsmooth as in b.5 a tritone it’s so goddamn expressive like the Mahler 10th. If before b.10 the sadness is somewhat prevented by dissonant chords, after b.10 it’s profoundly expressed in the most direct, beautiful and tragic way. You’re so talented to write this out that I somewhat hope you can be less talented so you would be less painful, because for me I hear tremendous pain in it. I wanna congrats on the musical genius in the piece but I wanna cry with you instead Ivan. You act like Christ who crucified himself in order to bless us with this beautiful music. Thank you Ivan.

Henry

 

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu

Thank you very much man, I haven't gotten such compliments in a long time wow. 😮 I agree, the tritone leap at the local climax from the start sounds like it comes from a Mahler piece, it has the same type of expressive nature (this choice was intentional). The harmonic exploration I did at the start is something I want to study in detail for future compositions, it feels atonal but grounded in tonal harmonic structures.

Thank you! For me the central climax feels like watching a movie scene where a man has lost everything in war, or something similar. 

The Christ comparison is too much in my opinion haha, but I do try to transform my personal suffering into something people can enjoy. 🙂

On 3/30/2025 at 6:51 PM, Luis Hernández said:

Quite an emotional piece.
Despite its brevity it sounds “progressive”, a bit in the Wagnerian idea of pulling forward all the time.

 

@Luis Hernández

Thank you! Yes, I used a similar idea, this is achieved by delaying the C# minor resolution for the very last chord of the composition. All the time I avoid a pure C# minor chord like in measures 2, 13 and 20.

On 3/30/2025 at 10:30 PM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Very beautiful Ivan, this has so much emotional depth wrapped up in it for such a short piece. Well done!

 

@Thatguy v2.0

Thank you! I wasn't expecting to express so much in less than two minutes, I guess my body was craving expressing itself after months of creative silence.

On 3/31/2025 at 3:47 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Hey @Ivan1791!

Wonderful writing!  The harmonies are quite neo-romantic and reflect well in the bleak but yet contemplative soundscape that is perfect for the string orchestra.  Great job and I am hoping that these short pieces of yours are but warm-ups for longer and more developed works!  Thanks for sharing.

 

@PeterthePapercomPoser

Thanks. 🙂 Yes, I made some little experiments in this piece and the results seem interesting. I do hope this helps me get the courage to compose a small symphonic poem in the near future.