Die Beiden - the two

For voice and piano. Lyrics by Hugo von Hofmannstahl

Sie trug den Becher in der Hand
Ihr Kinn und Mund glich seinem Rand,
So leicht und sicher war ihr Gang,
Kein Tropfen aus dem Becher sprang.

So leicht und fest war seine Hand:
Er ritt auf einem jungen Pferde,
Und mit nachlässiger Gebärde
Erzwang er, daß es zitternd stand.

Jedoch, wenn er aus ihrer Hand
Den leichten Becher nehmen sollte,
So war es beiden allzu schwer:
Denn beide bebten sie so sehr,
Daß keine Hand die andre fand
Und dunkler Wein am Boden rollte.

I don't have the advanced version of Finale, so if anyone wants to be heroic and convert it to MIDI I'd be grateful.

Edit: modfiied slightly and re-submitted. New PDF coming soon.

Two things I'd suggest:

One, there are a few spots, like measure 23, where you have Bb in the piano but the singer sings B natural and it sounds like you couldn't decide between minor or major and it's not great sounding

Two, and this is just a try-it-out-and-see-if-you-like-it suggestion, but try having the singer's last note be G# and sharp the G in the bass of the last piano chord. The piece feels minor overall, but the fact that occasionaly you switch into a major sound makes me think you'd enjoy ending on a major chord as well - it's a very Bach thing to do, if that appeals to you.

One more thing to consider:

You picked a beautiful poem there, but I don't find the content reflected enough in the music. I don't know whether you speak German, or how well, but the three verses have a different "character" in the poem, especially the third one. In your piece, the atmosphere stays the same throughout the piece. Now, I realize that your piece has similarities to very classical songs, say Mozart or Beethoven songs, so in this context it's certainly not "wrong" not really to interprete the poem in the music (as it was customary until Schubert). Before then, a song was composed to fit the overall atmosphere of a poem and would pretty much stay in this atmosphere throughout the piece, regardless of the dramaturgy of the text. And the "overall atmosphere" seems to fit in your piece too.

Personally I'd still find it more interesting if I heard a closer connection between the text and the musical form. But as I said, I don't know how good your German is. (And if you -don't- speak German, I'd advise against using German poetry for your music anyways.)

The other language related issue are stresses. Language, and a poem in particular, has a certain rhythm and certain stresses. And traditional tonal music (which your music appears to follow, except for some uncommon harmonic progressions and unusual melody lines) has natural stresses on the beginning of measures. If the stresses of the language and the metric stresses of the music don't fit together, it will sound a bit weird, and the text will be less understandable.

Speak out your text before writing your music to it and take notice of where the natural stresses are, then place these on strong beats, melodic high-points etc. But again, that only works if your German is good enough, of course.

This isn't of course an absolute rule. It's perfectly possible to write songs where musical stresses and the stresses of language don't fall together. It just doesn't seem to fit very well in your musical idiom.

I also don't know how you composed this, but if you have any kind of piano (or keyboard) near yourself and a basic ability to play it, play out your music, slowly, and even try singing the voice to it. There are passages where for example both hands of the piano are so close together that you constantly have to interrupt one voice to be able to play the other (as they use the same notes). This too is of course possible and allowed, but I'm not sure if it's necessary, as there's plenty of other positions for the left hand you could use, where you could avoid this problem. I don't know of course whether you've already composed this at the piano and by singing the voice part, but if you haven't, I definitely recommend to do that. It will help a lot getting your melodies and harmonies flowing. (Speaking of harmonies. I don't usually mind parallel fifths and octaves too much, but if they appear between the melody and bass and between strong beats, they really stick out a lot, which happens quite frequently in that piece. If that's your intention, I'm ok with that though.)

It's not bad in the least! I really like the general mood and the simple, yet idiomatic way of accompaniment. I also like that you don't just repeat the voice with your piano part (which is often the case), but build secondary melodies in the piano. And, as I said before, you've chosen a beautiful text there. So it's a great thing to continue working on, which I definitely recommend!

Dev, the b-flat and b-natural mixup was just a typo which i've corrected.

Gardener, I see what you're saying about the piano and I've tried to fix it.