"Caffeine Scherzo" for Violin and Piano in D minor

This was started a couple of weeks ago when Tomás was here. I wanted to make a nutty violin scherzo and used an old harmonic progression I had buried around here. Tomás provided the main theme. However, I felt rather uninspired and couldn't think of anything past the first 24 measures.

I picked up what I had done today and decided to finish it. Nothing fancy, but a relieving return to "my" tonality after composing the weird "Wasteland".

I once again thank Tomás for the first theme and for bashing me over impossible parts (which are now corrected).

Here's the mp3

Saying the score is messy would be an understatement.

This was pretty fun, and not bad at all.
What samples did you use? Not perfect, but the gliss. and pizz. were good.

Last cadence - how about have the V I with the V in root position, for a stronger finish?
Some of your accidentals are clumsily written. See, for example, the piano in the first beat of bar 47. The right hand should be F - Gb - F, so that you need fewer accidentals, and then it makes sense, as the left hand goes D - Eb - D.
Also, in the left hand part of that bar, you re-iterate those Ebs, which only need to be written once in the bar. There are problems like this throughout.

Overall, good, though. I found it quite exciting at points.

Wee! It's a delightful showpiece, but it does intimidate. From the listener's point of view, though, it works just like a rush of adrenaline (ultimately the title is quite suitable.) You should put all your scherzos as a separate set of pieces.

I'm not capable of playing this (or maybe I would if I had a LOT of time and patience to practice, which I don't, and even then it would have many imperfections) but if I could I'd love to: it's the kind of thing that has people standing up yelling 'bravo' a milisecond after the piece is over.

i agree with M is D, this is a very nice piece, has a good flow in it and also, and most important thing, is not boring. you can listen to it many times and it is always good!

congratulations! good work!

This was an excellent piece to listen to Berl, I thoroughly enjoyed it. No bad comments here at all. Great job and please post more.

You already know about my critiquing abilities, so here goes:

I enjoyed listening to the piece. I never had any desire to stop listening and check out something else. I was intrigued throughout the piece.

I especially liked what was happening at measures 8 and 12, and the similar parts throughout the piece. I thought the mp3 violin sound did a great job with the glissandos and whatever that bendy-ish thing is called at measure 8, which just made it sound even better.

I personally thought the ending was awesome, as most of your endings are. I would love to see this performed live, because as soon as it was over, the entire audience would applaud immediately, as M_is_D already said.

Overall, I liked the piece. I think the title suits it quite well, and if I could play the violin, I would want to play this. Keep up the good work!


Jon ~B~

Heh, thanks.

I'd love to get a violinist ready to work on this myself. ^^

That "bendy thing" is another characteristic of a dirty score. It's just for playback effectiveness, since the normal glissando didn't work and I was lucky enough to make that one work.

Daniel: I've done what you've suggested on the score, but I'm too lazy right now to upload it or update the music file.
It's just a chord.

Fantastic! Very fun and energetic! I loved the way the piano and violin worked together! Very well done!

Like Wayne said, I like this piece because of it's liveliness and energy (and also because of its name :p) The only little thing that I would like to point out is that instead of repeating thewhole section twice, maybe you could alter the left hand part the second time its played? Love the sudden decrescendo, very effective!

I enjoyed it immensely. Would be a joy to hear this live.

berlioz you rock.