A look into my past through the eyes of a Gannet.

Here I present to you the first piece I ever completed on any kind of large scale. Well... actually, the whole work in its entirety is not complete, but the first three movements are. The first movement was, at the time, my highest personal achievement ever... anyways, onto important stuff.

First Movement

I was studying "classical" and "romantic" forms and influences at the time (this is four years ago, mind you), and I happened across a skeleton layout of the "Sonata-Allegro Form" for the first time ever. At that point in my life, due to some of my own personal reasons, anything that presented any kind of definitive structure was fascinating and reassuring to me. So I pursued writing a piece in that structure, and doing research into that, and of course came to find out that the Sonata-Allegro form was used, as we all know, almost always in the first movements of Symphonies.

As such, for the first time in my life, I had the idea to write a Symphony.

...For string orchestra. Yes, you may shoot me now. I didn't feel comfortable attempting something for full Orchestra at the time.

So far, I've said that this piece is in Sonata-Allegro form and it's for a String Orchestra. It was written in the vain hopes of sounding like the opening to a Classical Symphony... and I still don't honestly know if I ever got close to that. At all. I just... can't judge my own music.

It pulls in a grand total of nine minutes and fourteen seconds length; it's the longest piece I've ever written. It's also, I think, the truest to one particular form I've ever succeeded in being (though that's not saying much). And it's one of the few pieces of mine that had a development section that... could ALMOST be called a development section. So in many ways, it is actually a piece just crammed full of my crowning achievements. So said I wrote it when I was 15 and can't surpass it now, lulz.

General Notes.

At any rate.

I should note that this has officially been placed on my growing list of pieces to be revised one day (starting AFTER February, when I won't have to worry about these bloody auditions anymore). My revisions include simply... loosening it up a bit. It still feels a bit stiff to me, like it could use some more in the development section than what little I've done, etcetera. I will also be scoring it out for a full orchestra (not sure if I'm gonna go for a classical-orchestra setting or something a bit more recent and of larger proportions; suggestions will be taken to heart). I will also be providing a score here as soon as possible; I simply don't have the time at the moment to fight my IDIOTIC computers to try and create one, before I go to work. More on that this evening and tomorrow evening.

I will also be posting the other two movements that have been written... though I'm not at ALL proud of them. I am going to post them simply because I want them to be public knowledge for comparison with the revisions which are to come.

And I'm going to write the finale to this. One day.

To those of you who've actually read this whole diatribe, please, do me one final favor. I have a college audition in composition coming up. I have been writing music fervently over the last couple months, and if I needed, I could easily have three brand-new pieces ready to go for it. Brand-new being, also, evidence of all my rantings about moving into a modern-era style of composition. I know, I've only ever posted classical-romantic stuff, but I SWEAR, the pieces I've got going now are modernistic and I'm so comfortable with them it's scary; you'll see them later. But an idea occurred to me. I could present this movement from the Gannet, and then a more recent piece, and then the more technical of the three that I'm writing now. Show how I've grown over the years (and that I can adhere to form... I hope). Any thoughts and opinions would be appreciated. Like I said, I'm really bad at judging my own music, so I don't have any idea if this would be worth the time.

Thanks, everyone... the Mp3 file attached should work for most of you, and I'll do my level best to get a score going before the morrow. The other two movements will follow, as well.

~Dallas

Mp3: 01 Track 1.wma - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

Hello :)

Ok, as I said before, I'm not going to be light about anything that I say here. First, I will list what I heard as I go through the piece and give the specific time markings:

:14 - You made the mistake of cadencing back to tonic as soon as your thematic statement (in a sentence form) was complete. According to convention, there should be at least some progression or half-cadencing at that point.

:14 to :30 - Your independent voices aren't saying the same thing about your harmony.

:45 - Again, you have a perfect feminine cadence when in sonata form, perfect feminine cadences always slow down the material I feel.

:47 - You introduce another theme, given by the periodicity of the melodic material, which leads me to believe that this your B theme. In addition, you half-cadenced onto the dominant, which is right, BUT, the entire B theme should be in the dominant region. You should fight modulatory urges in the exposition so that they can be accentuated in the development region.

1:26 - I liked the pedal bass, but, again, perfect cadential tendencies, especially to the tonic region should be avoided at all costs.

1:39 - you seem to be introducing another theme, but way too early in this stage. The exposition itself consists of usually three themes in order to keep the coherency and keep the length of the piece to a minimum.

2:11 - This seems like an elaboration/explanation of that previous theme and in the dominant region leading to... OH ok here it is, the repeat.

**********point - you must be wondering how classical/romantic composers ended up having their expositions so long. Answer - through repetition, elaboration, and elaboration of fragments *************************

3:11 - your harmonies on your planes of sound do not match up.. something I caught better on the second time through.

4:07 - again, something I caught the second time through, your A theme and B theme are not inherently different enough to cause conflict. With all of the preceding bridge material, it seems like the A theme and B theme are too closely related. There is nothing to be resolved in the development, it seems. My suggestion would be to cut out half of those unnecessary themes in the bridge and allow your real B theme to have more prominence. Another suggestion would be to rewrite your B theme to be much much much more contrasting.

Oh, and the B theme of a sonata-allegro in a minor key is usually in the Submediant region or the mediant region, not in the minor-dominant.

5:42 - Here is where your development begins in real earnest, but it disappointed me that it was all in doublings. Also, there wasn't much harmonic sequencing here... more repetition in a call-and-response fashion. That isn't bad at all, but it must be used in moderation.

6:40 - At this point, the repetition of the B theme in its entirety is unnecessary. The listener has already heard it 3 times to this point... and not only that, but the preceding material to this iteration is very similar to the B theme itself, meaning that refreshing it in the listener's mind will have function.

7:09 - Again, you have a perfect cadence, which is meant to be completely avoided in the development section. For me, the listener, there is absolutely no incentive to continue... no drama.. no harmonic motion.. no special colors/effects... no conflict.. no tension. It is absolutely essential that every sonata you write be interesting and innovative... even when you are using common-practice rules.

7:26 - Some sticky harmonic motion.. didn't really work for me.

7:34 - Very static, does cause some tension... but the kind that should be resolved fairly quickly.

8:03 - These are the types of harmonic motions that classical composers used, yes, but the rhythm and execution of them is not.... They are a bit too slow and there is very little melodic/thematic emphasis with these chords.

In short, your development section... really didn't have development. Development can be categorized by periodic development, motive sequencing, augmentation, diminution, elaboration, contraction, retrograde, inversion, call-and-response, and time displacement. Of which, you had periodic development and some elaboration.

There also was no recapitulation which DID give me a sense of conflict/tension, ... it just was late by about 7 minutes. The Coda seemed to be in working order, though.

Anyway, what I think would really really really benefit this is some raw counterpoint. Like other sonata-allegro forms I see on here, there are very few voices and it ends up being a simply homophonic work. The true Romantic and Classical masters had very rich, multi-voiced textures and used expanded tonality. A good part of your development section was in unsion, when a good 4 part texture could have been used.

Finally, the sonata is seen by beginners as a way to "restrict" or just simply as "rules" but, it is a form that creates conflict and resolves it. This undoubtedly creates interest as well, which is your goal whether you are writing subdued music or frenetic music. It is your job as the composer to create innovation within this framework and truly make your sonata stand out.

Good luck and I hope that wasn't too harsh! :) (or incorrect information, for that matter)

:S

If only I could leave such a detailed comment >.>

I liked the entire thing =\

I love the opening material however the second idea you had didn't seem to gel with that of the first - which isn't that bad of a mistake, mainly prepare for the change in some way OR do as Mozart and others did and leave a bar of silence (it works just as well).

A little note about sonata-allegro form. As you mentioned in your commentary on this piece, Sonata-allegro is a mere skeleton form. There are traditional ways of utilizing it BUT they are available only if you choose. Many composers have omitted one section or another (Haydn, for instance, would sometimes omit development sections, Beethoven would omit recapitulations, Schubert would use 9000+ keys in his work, and Mozart would blend different forms). As for the harmonic layout of Sonata-Allegro, for myself.. it worked good back then but really is redundant now. Today, you are free to move from the overall I-V structure of sonata-allegro. That said, I think for a piece written when you were 15 years old... its very good - and I can't wait to hear more work from you.

Thank you for the input, everyone; as I said, I am planning a revision of this. As such, I will take into account everything you have said at that point in time.

Mael, I can agree with most of what you said. And yes, it does lack a recapitulation. Trying to thing back... I believe I simply didn't know what the word meant at the time. *shot* Embarrassing to admit, but again, I had a simple flow chart of words showing the Sonata structure. No explanations. Anyways... when I get around to this, I already know what I'm going to do for the recap. And I'm going to change the key in the development (another thing I didn't realize back then). There were a few things you mentioned that had me confused, but I haven't the time to go into that depth right now. I've got other music of a much less crappy quality to be working on! xD

Thank you again everyone.

Dallas, this is an admirable early effort.

What I hear in it once I sift out what's "wrong" is that this piece effectively demonstrates your ability to formulate musical ideas. As for specifically what is keeping this piece from being all it possibly could be, Maelstrom and jawoodruff have given pretty detailed answers, and I concur with them in the main. I think it might be too much work to revise this to be presentable at a college audition. Though you might present it as an example of what you were capable of when you were younger, it might be better to focus your energies now on something more representative of who you are now, which I think is going to be more interesting to those for whom you will be auditioning.