February 3, 201115 yr This is a violin/piano duet, and basically my first legitimate composition (3/1/09). My piece's title comes from the relative freedom of the structure of my composition. Enjoy. Freedom
February 6, 201115 yr Shame that nobody has commented on this yet. Just for good order, you uploaded the scores in the wrong order. You might want to reupload them :) 1st movement: The freedom of the structure would be its weakest point to be honest. Structure is used to provide a way of putting one's music and intentions into more than just a few random musical ideas, so to make sure someone else gets what it is one is trying to portray or convey. Sure you can allow yourself some freedome, but don't loose structure - structure of any kind, whether it be repeats, variations on previous things, buildup of sentences etc. Besides this I think you have some nice ideas (sounds very 'popmusic'-y to me, the harmony and melody that is). I didn't like the excessive repeating of things in piano (m13-18 LH, m19-28 RH) and violin (m29-36) though. 2nd: Some parts sound quite hollow here: m9-10 (violin), m15 (piano and violin). There was more structure here, which made this more enjoyable to listen to. 3rd: I loved the differences between the intro and the middle part, and how you let the intro return again. Also, great job on putting a repeat there. This one sounded very well thought out, the best one of the 3 movements imo. There were no points which sounded empty or hollow or whathaveya. Well done. Overall: make sure you have solid idea of what you want to do and how you are going to do it music-wise. Just randomly putting some notes in because they sound a'right is usually not going to do the trick. Be sure to keep structure at hand, even very loose-structured sounding pieces have some structure to keep things logic; sometimes even more than one would expect from just listening to them. Personally I like the ABA or ABA' structures for short pieces best (or some variation on it like ABCA, ABAC, ABB'A' etc..). I did like it that you did not go all out with these pieces, overdoing it and trying to write >10 pages per movement or anything of the nonsense. One needs to have a solid background and idea of structure, sound and direction to do so, but that is not to say that you should not experiment with longer pieces. Just pay extra extra extra attention to those things when writing something larger. When done, don't forget to be your own critic ;) Thanks for sharing! :D
February 6, 201115 yr Author I absolutely agree about your opinions on the 1st movement; it wasn't very well built and relied an awful lot on ostinato patterns in both the piano and violin! I'm working on building all my subsequent works with a stable foundation (and have done). The second movement was quite sparse, true; I think I could have worked on the harmony there more. As for III, it was probably the most solid structurally as well . I'm currently studying harmony, which (I hope) will help my pieces to be more solid and coherent. Thank you for your feedback! -Lawrence
