Sarabande for Guitar

That's right, I've written some music.

This is my first posting of any music in a looong time indeed. I haven't been writing much (besides exercises) and have been having a few problems with confidence, scrapping things very quickly and losing almost all faith in what little ability I may have.

This took about three weeks maybe from start to finish, and I'm actually quite proud of it. It's my longest composition to date, at 24 bars () and is also in my opinion my most sophisticated.

It's in Binary form, the A section being 8 bars, the B section 16. The A section is a simple 'sentence' (following the model outlined in Schoenberg's "Fundamentals of Musical Composition") and the B section develops two motifs from the A section, the rhythmic motif of the melody in the first bar and the bass rhythm during the sequence in bars 5-6.

The style and texture are definitely Baroque inspired, but I'm not trying to be entirely faithful to the idiom - hence the few unresolved 7th and 9ths, and liberal switching between parallel modes.

Your opinions/contructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

PDF

MP3 - I apologise for the poor quality of the recording and performance, I was using a webcam mic, and my hands were cold (My guitar may be a little out of tune aswell I think)

Mark

Very nice indeed.

Glad to see you hold on and produce a complete work.
You shouldn't worry about "what little ability" you have. As you learn craft and the more you compose and push yourself without getting frustrated "what little ability" you have will grow.

I Hope you have gained the confidence boost you need because I enjoyed it. I did enjoy the switching back and forth of the modes (something I tend to do as well).

The only thing that I didn't like which is just my personal taste is the restatement of your opening theme at measure 17. I feel that because the piece is not very long and the A section repeats we hear the theme 3 times. Just would have liked to here more of the continuing development going somewhere other than the exact restatement.

But, as I said it was a good piece and I enjoyed.

Thanks very much for your commentary Majesty, I really do appreciate it.

I understand why the theme restatement in the B section could make things just a bit too repetitive - I did try to combat this slightly by playing the A section first ordinario then sul tasto, but that didn't come out too well in the recording - appears that my mic glossed over the better parts of my performance and accentuated the string noise and the mistakes!

I would definitely like a restatement of the theme to extent at that point, but perhaps it could do with varying slightly? I could try, for example, writing a different 'answer' to the first 2 bar phrase of the theme, so the theme would still appear, but bars 19 and 20 would be more development as opposed to simple repetition as they are now?

Again, thank you very much for your comments

Whilst overall this composition is a moderately convincing baroque pastiche, there are a couple of harmonically inappropriate moments that smudge an otherwise clever illusion. I have identified these as follows:

1) The incorrectly resolved suspension in bars 1-2
2) The incorrectly approached suspension in bars 6-7
3) Leaps after passing notes (eg. bars 1 ,3 etc.). These can be effective in some circumstances, but I feel they are strangely deployed herein.
4) In bars 14-15 the reversion to the tonic seemed slightly contrived,

The last system was great though, and your command of modality is very pleasing. I know you've been taking lessons with our resident early baroque expert, echurchill, and I concur with his belief that this a composition to be proud of. You've definitely learned a great deal since the start of that thread.

P.S. It was great to hear a real performance!

Finally! You posted some of your work. You don't have to worry about composition abilities. I myself have none, and yet I still post my pieces on to YC. It's about the feedback and criticism you get that lets you improve. Hiding in a shell won't help

Anyway, on to the piece. You should already know that I'm not a great theory student, and I only understood about the Italian 6th you used in bar 22 after you showed me the wiki page for it. Thanks for that. If I judge it from using my ears solely, I'd say the italian 6th works effectively. Your playing sounds good too. It's very baroque, which you stated that it's what you intended. The only thing that I think didn't sound as good is the interval of the first note at bar 6th. The compound minor 6th. But then, I'm only using my ears. If I use my eyes I can see that it resolves to something that sounds better, so I guess that's fine.

I agree that the sul tasto didn't show itself in the recording. Well, better luck next time!

Cheers, and nice piece.

Originally Posted by Zetetic

Whilst overall this composition is a moderately convincing baroque pastiche, there are a couple of harmonically inappropriate moments that smudge an otherwise clever illusion. I have identified these as follows:

1) The incorrectly resolved suspension in bars 1-2
2) The incorrectly approached suspension in bars 6-7
3) Leaps after passing notes (eg. bars 1 ,3 etc.). These can be effective in some circumstances, but I feel they are strangely deployed herein.
4) In bars 14-15 the reversion to the tonic seemed slightly contrived,

The last system was great though, and your command of modality is very pleasing. I know you've been taking lessons with our resident early baroque expert, echurchill, and I concur with his belief that this a composition to be proud of. You've definitely learned a great deal since the start of that thread.

P.S. It was great to hear a real performance!

As I state somewhere in my original post, I wasn't intending to stick too faithfully to the Baroque style, so I'm not surprised if it doesn't sound too accurately baroque - I wasn't being as careful with my treatment of dissonance as I would've been had I wanted to emulate baroque practices.

I don't quite understand points 1 and 2, I was under the impression that suspensions needed to be tied from a previous beat, and that these appogiaturas? (not sure about the spelling there though ) If you could explain why the one in bar two is incorrectly resolved I'd be extremely grateful. As for the one in bar 7, to me that's just a 9th - not a dissonance in my book so I didn't treat it as such

Point 3 you mention leaps between passing tones, but is it a problem when the leaping is between chord tones? (Here I'm treating the minor 7th as a consonance in bar one, hence the lack of resolution)

I'm not sure what you mean by point 4, the tonic isn't touched in bars 14-15, those two bars are | i6 - - | VI - V | in the key of the dominant (B minor).

By last system do you mean the last four bars? If so I'm very pleased, as the italian 6th was a chord I've not used before, and I'm glad its use was successful in this case

I have indeed learnt an awful lot from echurchill, he has opened my ears to some extremely exciting and exotic sounds, and all of this before Bach even arrived!

Thanks very much for taking the time to listen and comment.

Originally Posted by Nigel

Finally! You posted some of your work. You don't have to worry about composition abilities. I myself have none, and yet I still post my pieces on to YC. It's about the feedback and criticism you get that lets you improve. Hiding in a shell won't help

I suspect the people who ask you to write music for their games beg to differ. I'm not hiding in a shell, there's just been very little activity musically in my 'shell', so there's been little to come out of it for.

Originally Posted by Nigel

Anyway, on to the piece. You should already know that I'm not a great theory student, and I only understood about the Italian 6th you used in bar 22 after you showed me the wiki page for it. Thanks for that. If I judge it from using my ears solely, I'd say the italian 6th works effectively. Your playing sounds good too. It's very baroque, which you stated that it's what you intended. The only thing that I think didn't sound as good is the interval of the first note at bar 6th. The compound minor 6th. But then, I'm only using my ears. If I use my eyes I can see that it resolves to something that sounds better, so I guess that's fine.

I agree that the sul tasto didn't show itself in the recording. Well, better luck next time!

Cheers, and nice piece.

Thanks very much for listening and commenting, and I'm glad to have introduced you to the italian 6th - it's a great sound, as are all the augmented 6th chords.

Mark

Mark, I suspect my terminology was flawed in relation to the critique of your composition. What's far more important than terminology, rules or stylistic treatment is whether or not the composition sounds right. It's clear to me from the work itself, as well as from your discussions with echurchill, that you are (whether you confess to it or not) attempting to emulate the baroque style. Some parts of this composition succeeded in that aim, others failed. Whilst you express the desire not to copy the idiom entirely, there were moments where it sounded like you simply weren't succeeding in emulating, rather than actively attempting to be modern.

Originally Posted by Mark

I don't quite understand points 1 and 2, I was under the impression that suspensions needed to be tied from a previous beat, and that these appogiaturas?

Bars 1-2 sound unusual because it appears that you have two consecutive, unprepared dissonances. The first is a leap to a non-chord tone, the second an unprepared Ic-V-I cadence. Whether or not you consider this legal or not is a moot point; whilst textbooks and guides are indispensible for compositional exercise, when writing pieces like this for fun, you have to let your ear do at least half the work. If it's legal, but sounds wrong, it is wrong. Likewise, if a pleasing effect can be achieved by flouting the 'rules' of counterpoint, so be it.

Originally Posted by Mark

I'm not sure what you mean by point 4, the tonic isn't touched in bars 14-15

This was my mistake. I meant bars 17-19, where the pivot back to the tonic sounds rather eyebrow-raising.

Mark, was this piece an exercise in Baroque harmony and voice-leading/counterpoint?

When you said sarabande i thought you were talking about the ballet sarabande and polka, and I thought you arranged it for guitar