Romance for violin and piano in E moll

Hi guys,
I'm pretty new to this forum, I've found it accidently few minutes ago and I'm thrilled that such an incredible place for people like me egsists
It's the first score I've put here, on young composers. The piece was meant to be a rather simple one, with a clean melody and high amount of melancholia. Please fell free to criticise me - I've never gone to any music school neighter had any musical training. Having some advice or someone to pick and show me my mistakes is certeinly not that bad idea

here it is:
SoundClick artist: Maciej Keler - page with MP3 music downloads

You've got some good material here, nice job. A couple comments...for one, in your score the violin part should be above the piano. Also, I'd be careful when choosing you're harmonic tones. For example, many times you used only two given pitches of a triad, many times open fifths, which isn't really appropriate for a Romantic piece. Watch your voice leading, there was a lot of parallel movement, again not fitting given the Romantic style. Some of the A section seemed a bit rhythmically messy, I'd reconsider some of your 3:2 rhythms, or try to keep it more consistent. Make sure to use careful judgement with some of your dissonances also. Now to things I really liked. Great thematic material in the violin, playable, good. I think it was around 75, liked the modulations a lot. Your choice of harmonies for mostly enjoyable. Just a few tweaks of the technical things and I think you'll have yourself a fine piece.

Yeah..... the range on the violin is very, very limited in your piece.... I'd look at more string writing.

I wouldn't say it's all that limited. The violin part goes kind of high up in the register and stays there for a while, but it uses the middle register too. The violin does have a G string, though, so you don't have to limit yourself to the D above middle C and above.

Originally Posted by Voce

I wouldn't say it's all that limited. The violin part goes kind of high up in the register and stays there for a while, but it uses the middle register too. The violin does have a G string, though, so you don't have to limit yourself to the D above middle C and above.

Uh... think of it as a violin and not a viola...

3rd for us = 5th for them.

I think that for the most part the way the piece develops and the melody unfolds is very nice and well paced, this is very important. While you may not use a huge violin range, so what. It sounds nice and you don't always have to be extreme. Now the piano part stays very simple throughout. I would suggest looking at some piano accompaniments to see how you might allow the piano to help develop the piece more. Right before the two minute mark you make the piano part a bit more interesting for a few seconds and then that stops. A few seconds after that you lay into that nice dissonance. However, this dissonance should probably be given more of a preparation...Maybe land on a consonant chord, shift to a dissonant and then resolve on the next note of the melody..In the style the rest of the piece is written, this sounds abrubt.
just some ideas..
Ben

Thanks for all your replies

I'm going to rewrite the score and in addition rearrange it for trumpet and piano (I picked up the trumpet few weeks ago and it seems that I'm doing pretty well, so I'll be playing this piece by near future) and make some minor changes.
Indeed, there are lots of 1-5 chords, which I, by no means like and don't want to change, as I tried putting some fuller chords and they didn't meet my expectations. I will try to avoid parrarell movements, though. The dissonance that benxiwf mentioned is in fact a little unexpectable and could be done better.
The violin and piano are very simple as I wished my girlfriend, who is rather an amateur violinist, would play this with me when I've learned how to play piano. It wont happen so quickly anyway, I dont have one yet, but hey, its good to have some plans for future:p
I did look at some masterpieces, being seriously inspired by Shostakovich's works (my favourite piano trio No.2) And my later works tend to be rather more complicated. I hope you'll find them more enjoyable and interesting.

Cheers, Maciej

PS - should I paste my other works (when I fell they're finished) here, or make a new thread?