Sonata in D major

sonata in classical style,only first movement is complete,hope you like

http://www.youngcomposers.com/profile/music/f-x/composition?entry=68602 sonata in D major

Ah the old classical sonata. I will not go into the harmony which is as far as I can tell OK (voice leading I haven't checked). I feel many people think writing a classical sonata is just like performing a trick: if you use all different kinds of more or less 'cliche' sounding things, with many runs against little chord (or note) fillers, things will work out. Not! ;) The truly great classical sonatas (referring to the style of haydn's larger sonatas, mozart's and beethoven's earlier sonatas) are wonderful masterpieces ingeniously put together.

I feel this piece is inbetween the two. Not as cliche and over the top trying to hard, but still 'showing off' instead of using the different pieces to make a coherent piece. That's my biggest complaint, this piece is not coherent enough for me. It feels like you are telling 6 different stories all at once. Why not try to tell one story very well instead of 6 just a bit? There are quite some changes of rhythm in your piece (not exactly rhythm but I don't know what to call it). You have these 16th note runs and follow them by 8th note figures (also quarter notes from time to time) very often, too much for my taste. Like pressing the gaspedal all the way down, and then abruptly brake... over and over again. This is a nice way of creating contrasting motions, but it should better not be overused.

On the other hand, the large amount of using just a few ingredients made things very repetitive and also motionless in another way then I just described. The piece did not go anywhere, it only seemed to restate itself all the time.

Pretty much the only ingredients you used were: 16th note runs + chords or parts of chords on the beat, 8 note 'hops' (like in m9/m21-23/m29 etc etc), quarter notes, and thats about it. Vary things, syncopate (!) from time to time, give some bach-like parts to the fingers (by which I mean that the 2 hands play 3 or 4 voices for a few measures), add some colour, and only state things a couple of times at most without literally repeating them (that is, exactly the same or the same but with other notes... also vary the shape of the motifs and melodies you use).

I think you did a good job overall, you did not overdo things in a out-of-the-period way, just those few things: too much repeat and too little variation of ingredients with too many 'rhythm' changes. Writing is rewriting and deleting the parts that are not essential. Thanks for sharing! - I hope you don't feel I crushed your piece, that is not what I meant to do :)