my first composition

Pardon the drive-by posting, my crazy semester isn't quite over. Here is "Student-Piece #1" (for piano solo) as performed by Blair McMillen of counter)induction:

http://music.schmonz.com/20071211-stude ... emiere.mp3

I'll post the score once I've computerized it.

 

Good work! Your pianist did a good job too.

Nicole
Canada

 

An in-between Medtner-Rachmaninov composition! I believe your musical preferences are clearly revealed here, and the piece sounds very accomplished too. I'm interested in the score!

 

Very nice composition and also a very good piano performance. Congratulations!

 

Thank you all for your kind comments! I listen to so much Medtner and Rachmaninov that some influence is probably unavoidable, but still, that's quite a compliment. Ballpark figure: it took me about 50 hours of piano/pencil/paper/desk to write these few minutes of music. Composing for me is extremely difficult, and I'm painfully aware of my limitations with counterpoint, fugue, and large-scale form, but the results of this first piece are a strong motivator to keep at it. I've got 1/3 of it entered into Sibelius, so I should be able to share the score soon.

 

Good job ! It may be far-flung, but do I detect some Medtner influences ? :lol:
Especially the secondary theme from Ophelia's Song ?
It sounds good, and is very well played. Only thing I do not understand is this lone defiant gesture in the middle, which comes out of nowhere, and doesn't seem to go anywhere either. Some contrast is desirable halfway a piece, but perhaps it should develop a bit more logically. Just my 2 cents - I do not have a clue about composing.

 

Ophelia's Song? Not intentionally, but not impossible, but I (who am as yet unable to step outside my creation) don't hear it myself. Regarding the playing, there are parts which are lovelier than I can render them myself, and parts I don't totally love. One of the latter is that climactic moment right before the little fugue. Played with less hesitation, it works much better IMO. Then again, the guy had only a few days to learn a half-dozen pieces, including mine. I don't claim to have more of a clue about composing than you do, Chris: this is my first stab at it. Thanks for the feedback.

BTW, I got tired of Sibelius (entering piano-style intermittent polyphony sucks) and decided to find something open-sourcier to score with. LilyPond looks like it'll be great, once I get the hang of its little notation language.

 

I hear the bells of Moscow.

 

Troika bells, too.

It does sound like the first part doesn't develop as much as it could. I'm certainly no expert but maybe you could have two pieces here.

Very beautiful.

 

Pete, you're absolutely right. In fact, neither of the two themes is anywhere near fully developed, at least to my taste. Novice composer, rushing to meet a deadline, etc. I'd like to make more of the material sometime. What are troika bells?

 

A Russian sled, a troika has little brass jingle-bells to announce its arrival.

The reference is to this performance...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-umLy_5J3k

Pete

 

Some very nice melodies you have there. Congradulations! You should be proud!

 

Why in the heck do you need three horses to pull maybe 600 pounds? That must be crazy fast! A horse can easily pull 2,000 pounds by itself, not to mention on snow.

 

That is a really lovely composition with an almost Russian sound of it. Got me thinking of Rach's preludes. Some inspiration from there?

 

Very nice composition. It sounds somewhat sad yet still very playful. Cutting off the first minute of silence would help (unless that's part of the show).

 

I've been avoiding my schoolwork by playing with LilyPond. Here's the first third or so of my piece from last semester, with lots of markings missing and some confusing notation, but enough to start playing through. I can safely say I really like LilyPond: even though I'm a beginner, it gives me as much control over the output as I feel like having. Neat software. And now I'd better get back to what I ought to be doing!

If anyone plays through this and has a hankering for the rest of the piece, let me know -- I'll be happy to procrastinate some more. ;-)

 

Broken link

I can't get the link somehow
Thanks

 

Actually had time for this last week. Just a few more things to learn about positioning dynamic markings, and then I can call it a finished score and post it here.

After working with it long enough to be sure, LilyPond really is great after all. Piano writing is a little harder to score nicely than other instrumentations, but they're working on this in the development version and it's getting better quickly.

 

score and recording, finally

Okay, I'd better post this as an almost-finished draft rather than sit on it any longer. I've also posted a cleaned-up version of the first performance.

Any notational suggestions welcome (the grossly overlapping bits of text I already know about ;-). Thanks for listening and reading!