Piano Trio No. 1

A musical encapsulation of some of my feelings regarding the day and the night."the Day" utilizes a lot of octatonicism and is based on the compositional technique of Stravinsky, but also has some French influences"the Night" utilizes 12-tone serialism, but not necessarily in the way that you would expect.

Piano Trio No. 1

These are nice. I particularly liked "The Night", which seems too short. "The Day" seemed a little long winded by comparison, which is weird cause it's hardly long at all. Not sure how I feel about it, I can't really understand some of the melodies. Like the solo cello "with anger", not sure why but seems a little pointless. Maybe it's because I think the second note in 36 should be quarter note (turning that into a bar of 2/4). You should probably disregard these thoughts.

Also, you have slurs in a pizz. section which means the player will "hammer-on" the note with out re-plunking. I think might be missing some arco markings, because there are some up-bow marks which would imply something strange when pizz.

If you conceived of "The Night" using 12-tone techniques, you stretched them too far to be considered serial. It more based around pairs of unordered hexachords. Your "trick" to get around the ordering of the row made the piece perceptually non-serial. Your row is also made up almost entirely of 3rds/6ths and 4ths/5ths forming various diatonic hexachords, stuff which is recommend to be avoidded in Schoenberg's texts on the subject. Now obviously this was the point, but when you stretch 12-tone technique this thin, it's no longer "serial" (which is generally the label for the post-WWII extensions of Schoenberg's techniques).

But that doesn't mean I don't like the piece, I think it's lovely, just not serial or 12-tone.

If you conceived of "The Night" using 12-tone techniques, you stretched them too far to be considered serial. It more based around pairs of unordered hexachords. Your "trick" to get around the ordering of the row made the piece perceptually non-serial. Your row is also made up almost entirely of 3rds/6ths and 4ths/5ths forming various diatonic hexachords, stuff which is recommend to be avoided in Schoenberg's texts on the subject. Now obviously this was the point, but when you stretch 12-tone technique this thin, it's no longer "serial" (which is generally the label for the post-WWII extensions of Schoenberg's techniques).

But that doesn't mean I don't like the piece, I think it's lovely, just not serial or 12-tone.

That's not true at all. The hexachords were ordered, and I use the complete row much more than you might at first assume. It's fine if you still wouldn't call it "serial", but just because it's not traditional Schoenberg serialism does not mean that it is not, in fact, serial. In any case, it's kind of a silly point to argue, because I like the piece as it is and that's really all that matters. Also, I realize it's quite short, but that was part of my feelings on the night.

Sorry about the problems with the sheet music of the first movement; I've literally spent hours working on it and still keep finding things that I've missed. Thanks for pointing those things out.

About the notation: it's not a problem. I have also spent how trying to get something without notation mistakes.

About the row: yes you do state them in order at first, but then you left them ringing so that you could play with the notes in any order, and repeat notes without passing through the full chromatic. It doesn't really matter though, as the piece sounds great anyway, and plenty of other composers have used 12-tone techniques in this sort of way.

Something I forgot last time: the pop from editing into bar 21 and into bar 25 in "The Night" could be avoided I think, with more careful editing. And it's such a nice recording other than that, that I think it would be well worth it to make it sound smooth there.

Something I forgot last time: the pop from editing into bar 21 and into bar 25 in "The Night" could be avoided I think, with more careful editing. And it's such a nice recording other than that, that I think it would be well worth it to make it sound smooth there.

I'm surprised you're the first person that's said anything about that (I have posted this elsewhere, too)! I keep meaning to go back and try again to fix that, but I was having trouble before because of what was reverberating before it. I'll try again, though.