[R-L] Amphores sur le sable pour piano seul

e

Very good piece of music and enjoyed how you take advantage of the sustained and damper pedals -- love the last cluster especially. It is a shame this has been left uncommented. Reminiscent of Debussy's Sunken Cathedral but with a more Scraibinesque harmonies. For future pieces though, experiment with much more rhythmic values would be of great benefit. This piece would work well as part of a series of pieces.

Although your notation has its benefits, I wonder if you could have it simplified. The "cut-out" score you use may make the piece seem more complicated than it is. So I ask why did you use this notation method? Did you try to use unbarred measures and just fermatas over long note values w/ the indication at the beginning that these notes are to be held ? Check some modern scores such as Berios' Sequenza for piano or Ruggles piano music for alternate notations of what you want for the future.

Hello composerorganist ! thanks for your comment :

Very good piece of music and enjoyed how you take advantage of the sustained and damper pedals -- love the last cluster especially.

Thanks, wasn't easy to emerge from depths !

For future pieces though, experiment with much more rhythmic values would be of great benefit. This piece would work well as part of a series of pieces.

Yes, you are totally right. For the futur, I should more present the piece I post. In fact, with this pr

For Ruggles, Invocations for piano is an excellent work and in some ways reminiscent of your.

I do agree that the strategy to vary the tempi does work --- especially for the length of the piece but glad you agreed that this method would be even more fascinating with a greater array of note values. Also to see the reverse, look at Messaien's study in note value durations and touches. He maintains the same barring and metronome mark but uses a wide variety of note values in a serialistic manner. His score achieves the same ends as yours but using an opposite method.

Raphael

Welcome to YC. As a piece that is made to go with a visual, this fits perfectly. It was not intended as a standalone where it might fail, but rather for the reason it was composed, it fits your purpose.

The more you listen to other works here and comment on them you will see that many will return the favor.

Well done

Ron

I really like the harmonic language you employ, as well as your fluidity in meter. Like rolifer said, the rhythmic consistency of quarter-note chords would get a little redundant as a standalone piece, but as accompaniment, this music works quite well to create, as you intended, a French/Russian-esque atmosphere without sounding explicitly derivative.

Oooh, nice to see another on here who was heavily inspired by the Impressionist movement, I was beginning to think I was the only one. >.> Your composition style actually reminds me a bit of my own, albeit a more mature and dissonant one. I did like this piece but the one thing I would've liked to see was a more defined melody and a little more use of form. It was very pseudo-Impressionist to me but I could hear influence from Scriabin as well. It also did remind me of Debussy's Sunker Cathedral as well. Overall, a nice piece that just wanders around a bit too much. As mentioned before, if it were a standalone, I'm not sure how well it'd work.

I enjoyed listening to this piece, though I would have enjoyed some lighter, faster parts (than you have) for more contrast. The harmonies worked very well for me. Is there a particular theory you worked from, or just what sounded good or what the composers you named used?

I think that this composition lacks a sense of rhythm and meter. In it's place is an excellent use of delay and timing. The short length keeps it far away from boredom. You probably intended it that way, but I think it is a mistake. Rhythm is the one element of music that is relatively unchanged over the last 300 years. Of course you can get away without it and composers like Philip Glass have their periods of popularity, but the record suggests that composers who ignore it will see interest in their compositions die out over time.

All in all I think it is great that you are exploring the multimedia aspect with your painter friend, and I hope we see more from the two of you!

e

Very good. I'm enjoying this. I like the use of semi-undetermined notation and clusters. I also like the bitonal elements between the right and left hand and the thick resonant chords.

You use a lot of triads in this. Have you considered using 7ths and 9ths etc to further add colour to the chords? Perhaps the register you're in is too low for that though.

Also, another device I like to use when using big chords and building tension is to move up in minor 3rds, so tracing out a diminished 7th chord.

e

This was a really magical listening experience - lovely performance too. I felt that I wasn't being bombarded with avant garde 'freedom' but that actually this is a very restrained piece that never strays from the illustration of its subject and never gets carried away, and it just sits very well with me. There is enough melodic consistency, between ideas and within the ideas themselves (eg. the 'restrained' feeling created by upward semitone movements in something that you could loosely equate to a perfect cadence, 1st two chords of 3rd section) that the piece never becomes boring. I like it very much.

It's very neat. I like it because it is neat. But not my cup of tea!

Well done! And welcome to the best Forum on earth!

Pieter Smal

Wow... looking at your score scares me! However, it is neat, and i like organised and neat scores. alot.

It does work extremely well as a companion piece, as aforementioned, however my view of the watercolour isn't as dark as your music makes it out to be. In saying that, the mystique and depth are definitely there. Very atmospheric and undulating. A nice piece.

I like Ravel also, but mainly La Valse and other works of this vein. Your stuff is very different to my style indeed...i am more a fan of excitement and driving pulse etc. I like this work though; very interesting to look at and listen to and lull to.

e