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Hello everyone, I want to share the second Bagatelle I composed. It is a slow tempo Bagatelle in E minor for the piano. Most of my pieces are in a moderate tempo and in major so I wanted to test myself once by composing a slow piece that stays for the whole time in minor. As my previous Bagatelle, I composed it and played it myself in a Yamaha P-515 digital piano with the Yamaha CFX piano sound. I might have composed some parts differently but, when things got too hard for me to play, I had to simplify them to my level. I did record it with the phone so it has a lot noise and the quality is not good. Also, I made a couple of mistakes here and there but this was the best I could play it. I plan to practice it and record it with better quality but it might take some time. The piece is in ternary form with the main theme (A) in Emin and a second theme (B) in Bmin. The B theme is restated in the home key (Eminor) before going back to the repetition of the A theme. Since the tempo is slow and the themes themselves quite long there are no repeats in any section. Any comment and feedback is more than welcome! Thank you for listening and hope you enjoy it!

Yes it does sound useful to build up that sort of vocabulary rather than just an intuitive subconscious absorption of influences. I imagine it gets more useful the more of this kind of things you have in your backpocket. Kind of like when you learn a language there comes a point where you reach a critical mass of acquired vocabulary to where you can convey and understand much more than you were able previously. Thank you for the example!

Hello, It is quite lush. I like that it is not overwritten. This looks like it would sound good with a real orchestra. My favorite parts were the times you went for a big contrast. There was one moment everything got loud, when the piccolo joined in, that was especially powerful. You do a good job changing up the aural environments you put this simple melody, which allows the work to convey some unique feelings. This is something I used to do in my works a lot, and I personally love using motifs to give certain sections of music a new meaning. - Evan

I didn't have access to an instrument either - only college ruled paper and a pencil. I decided to write music that I knew would work, with harmony that I could understand from past experience, which for me meant writing in a style using Japanese Anime/JRPG music as a model. Because of that I was able to imagine how it would sound because I didn't do anything wild or outside of my knowledge. I felt inspired so I kept coming up with different tracks to an imaginary anime/videogame. I just listened to the beginning and right away I was already analyzing the harmony and understanding how he got that dissonant/tragic sound at the beginning which to me is just a certain voicing of an E minor add 9 chord with the root omitted but implied from the first two melody notes. I love the crunchy sound he got from that chord. Then, the cello melody plays around with a melody that borrows the #11 from Lydian but still staying minor. There are some folk musics (especially in Poland) like the Mazurka, which like to sometimes use both the natural 4 and the #4 of the scale to give the music that folksy, mountainish feel. Some weapon dances also make use of this. Then, in measures 12, he uses an F# minor add 9 sonority instead, basically transposing the beginning up a step but voicing it an octave lower, the violin taking the folksy melody that the cello had before. That's how I would try to understand just the introduction of this piece (which I haven't yet listened to in its entirety). For me that would be helpful if I wanted to write something on the model of this piece in the future, or just to understand how those kind of chords/melodies sound the way they sound so I could get the same sound with different tonalities/melodies. The understanding that there's a half-step dissonance between the added 9th and the minor 3rd of these chords is inherent to my understanding of these chords. Thanks for your post and I hope that at least some of that is helpful!

Hi, I've recently composed two short preludes for solo piano. I'd like to know your thoughts. Thank you in advance!

Thank you for your detailed comment! I agree that they both give the impression of incomplete, hurriedly-written pieces. Although preludes can be this short in general, but that shortness would require a sense of unity and completeness. This hurry and impatience manifest, I think, in some of the transitions as well.

Very impressive! I can't really add anything new to the superlative comments others have posted above... A very emotional and expressive work which was quite an enjoyment to listen to! May I ask what your technique was to achieve six-part counterpoint with such an intricate theme? I mean, I've done myself several counterpoint exercises for more than four voices, but always with simple stile antico themes... How did you go about working out this complicated subject?

Hi @Moueen Issa, General comment about the 2 pieces: I agree with @Jqh73o regarding the length of your pieces: I feel a bit "frustrated" that the piece finishes that early. Gave me a feeling of "the guy was a bit in a hurry to finish his piece". 1/ In the prelude in F minor, I particularly enjoyed the transition in bar 9, and bb. 15-22. A detail: first bass note of measure 13 didn't seem "correct" to my ears. 2/ Regarding your prelude in A minor, what I liked most were material intro (bar 1), material around bar 5. What I liked less was the almost duplicated bars 7 & 8 (bar 8 would have deserved a little more work) . Transition in bars 13-14 is good, the next one (bb. 15-16) feels a bit weird. Maybe a third transition step would have made it smoother? Overall, I really enjoyed listening to your pieces, thanks for sharing! Julien

Thank you for your responses! Definitely food for thought, though these things tend to have to marinate for a while. I do know the outlines of theory. How functional harmony is supposed to work and simple modulation in that paradigm. But if I try to apply that it just doesn't tend to work. The only thing that does is counterpoint rules. But I learned about that by actually doing some exercises on a Cantus Firmus. I would be interested in some applied music theory course because I tend to take away little from hearing about secondary dominants. When I write I tend to just focus on each voice and how it plays with the others. Harmony emerges from that. So I tend to think in quite simple terms of what a voice should be doing and how to transition smoothly from one idea to the next. That's up to now the only way I can write (to me) natural sounding music that isn't a study on a grammar rule. I imagine it is useful to be able to reach for something concrete when you're looking for a specific musical effect or sound. But reading about theory hasn't gotten me there thus far. I wonder if you happen to have any resources to recommend for this. Or a way of approaching it. Because the way I've been reading about it, it precisely leads to a tune harmonised by I IV V... knowing just enough rules to be boring. That's very interesting. I've never really been in a situation where I was away from a computer for an extended period of time. If I could afford a month's vacation to nothing but cultivate my musical interests (violin/piano/composing) I'd love to do that sort of thing. I think being forced by circumstance to make such a drastic change has a very powerful effect on the brain. Something that I think is quite difficult to fake. If you don't mind, could you say more about how that went? What was the baseline from which you started? Did you find it difficult to know how it's going to sound? Did you feel limited by what you could come up with independently from an instrument (which modern notation software basically is)? Did you compose on the piano? I would be really interested to know about that transition. I have never done REALLY this seriously. There's so much music I like, but I've never really gone to analyse it with theory in mind. I can listen and find things that sound interesting but I don't know how I'd apply theory to learning about it. I find harmonic analysis quite exhausting and in the end not very illuminating. ------------------------ And example of a piece I absolutely adore is this Janacek quartet. Even got to listen to it live a while ago. And it was an amazing performance. Engaging all the way through. But I don't know how I'd analyse it with theory and mind.

Hi @UrKr, The piece is really playful and energetic! The four range of the clarinets are all featured and well used. Your motivic usage is also great as the piece is really coherent! I notice in b.47 you use that Ab G F E motive! I have written a clarinet quintet before and that’s exactly my main motive of the whole piece!!! For the scoring, I would use C# instead of the first Db of that particular phrase. The clarinet can be written in a transposed score instead of the actual pitch. Also, I’m note sure if some of the slurs can be played, for example b.16 to 20 2nd violin, and b.35 to 39. B.50 clarinet’s Arco marking should be deleted. I feel like the ending does not end firmly as it’s in G minor. Maybe you can end the piece in tonic C minor? Thx for sharing! Henry

When I was the organist for First Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, I had the great pleasure of knowing and frankly being over-awed by the absolute first-rate jazz pianist Rich Harney who played with the Jazz band there for the contemporary service. His death in 2020 hit me very, very hard; I dedicated this piano work, that I was midway through composing at the time, to him, because I was thinking of him so very much as I composed the conclusion. My background has been so thoroughly classical in nature that I can't say I was capable of absorbing very much Jazz into my own style, but at a minimum he inspired me to break out harmonically somewhat from the stringent baroque style that I had so much been limiting myself to before I met him. Incidentally, the other piano work I previously uploaded here (Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost) was composed only after this one. I recorded the below for streaming as prelude for a service there during COVID lockdown that turned out to be my very last Sunday as organist there because I was so upset by the pastor and music director afterward both declaring this music to be "inappropriate" and "rather dissonant". Whether it is or not made no difference to me, since if the expression of these emotions were to be banned then what point was there to making music at all? Did I overreact? What's done is done. And may angels accompany Rich Harney into paradise.

Hi @StripedGazelle, I don’t know how the pastor feel, but at least I like this very much! Your voice leading is very smooth and all those dissonance and modulations are well prepared. Maybe the pastor and music director expect something in stringent baroque style. I remember when I was a student in my university, one of my classmate who is an organist love playing dissonant organ music before the singing the school anthem of a weekly assembly, and it caused almost all other students laugh. Maybe they thought the expression inappropriate in the church, which I absolutely do not agree. It’s also amazing that given how varied your harmony is as it’s influenced by jazz music, it’s well handled due to your rich knowledge in Baroque counterpoint. P.S. I only know now why you use breve in your pieces, including the previous post “Not all those wander who are lost”. You are an organist! I always believe an organist has the most comprehensive knowledge of counterpoint and harmony! And you do! Thx for sharing! Henry

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu @Thatguy v2.0 I checked it out : it's a great piece indeed, very peaceful and inspiring 🙂

Hi @Sonata_5, I think at an early stage of writing it would be beneficial to have some great composers to imitate with, as this helps you attain basic writing skill quicker. Once getting more skilful in composing, you can start thinking on your own style. I think the basis of having your own style is to have something unique you wanna talk to the world, and those words can only be expressed in your own sound. Henry

I enjoyed this very much. It has a nice bounce.

I agree, sometimes music flows more from the heart than from a strict structure. Beethoven's Violin Concerto and the 2nd movement of the 7th Symphony are fantastic choices—so rich and thematic.

I am blown away by the rich orchestration and lovely dramatic vocal line. It is a beautifully crafted work. I am truly in awe of your talent. Mark

Here’s a duet I composed for Cello and Piano! I tried to make use of more “modern” harmonic ideas with this piece. Overall, I find it decent, and probably would change a couple of things. Any feedback is welcomed!