December 21, 200718 yr Okay so a few months ago I submitted a piano piece and which was okay but now I'm going for round two. I'm taking first year introduction composition at the University of Victoria and the end of each term we have to write a short piece for a concert showcase sort of thing. I basically came up with this piece when I had returned home (my school's on an island, I otherwise live on the mainland). I came home to a brutal storm that gave us a power outage for a good 20 hours, during which time I wrote this experience-inspired piece "The Tempest" which is for violin, cello, and piano. It's in ternary form because that's what a storm is in: ternary form. Don't laugh at me it's true! :D Well it's sort of in ternary form. It's to represent the coming storm, the eye of the storm and the final blow, and also the ending, I suppose a brief codetta, to represent the feeling of confusion and backwardness a storm leaves you in. The recording was a live recording at the concert so there were a few mistakes. Otherwise I hope I did well. :D The criticism my teacher gave me was that there were too many parallel octaves and that they feel empty but I don't know... it's supposed to be a sort of neo-romantic work and Romantic composers used octaves galore. Tell me if you think of anything else! Thanks. The Tempest DEC 24th: I added the Sibelius file for those who would like to see the score. Keep in mind the final score had a lot of pencil editing and a lot of other changes that are not on this version. The Tempest.sib
December 21, 200718 yr Well first, neo-anything you can do pretty much whatever you want because it is just meant to SOUND like the style. This you did VERY well. I do hear many parallel octaves here that could be FILLED up with harmony if nothing else. Take a shot at letting loose some harmonies. A LOT of the Romantic pieces were made form lush, juicy harmonies that are absolutely heartwarming. So, yeah, other than that, I saw no problems! Congrats on the performance too, I can't wait 'till I get to have my stuff performed from one of my classes. (Which I have to wait for college for... grrr..)
December 21, 200718 yr Wow. I really liked it. Lots of emotion and excitement! It really reminded me of a huge tempestuous storm!
December 21, 200718 yr nice piece, you have lots of potential, i look forward to more music! although I felt as if the piece should continue, think about seeing what you can do to develop it more, might be an interesting experiment to see how many different things you can do to it, using inversion, augmentation, contrapuntal or harmonic devices, imitation, etc.
December 22, 200718 yr Author Wow thanks. Morivou I admit that much of the piece is just glorified V-I action with a I-V at the end. And yes I've never had my pieces performed live before. It's always just been me experimenting on Sibelius and listening to the horrid yet useful computer generated music. Mahlon I would like to develope a bit more. It doesn't seem long enough for a storm but it had to be max two minutes. I stretched a bit by going to 2:20 so if I was to rewrite it I would definitely try to change it up a bit. Problem is with such a short time there's little you can do other than a basic ternary. Thanks for the responses.
December 22, 200718 yr Very nice tune...could stand to be longer, but nice. has some very interesting ideas and nice tension.
December 25, 200718 yr Author Okay I added the sibelius file if anyone wants to see the sort of score. It was changed a lot after it was printed out.
