Minuet

Hi there! Newbie composer here. Oh - let's be honest: utterly newbie composer, that is.It's such a pleasure to have discovered this site!I had some free time yesterday morning, so I decided to write myself a birthday present. It's a short minuet for the piano (performed by Sibelius). I would love to hear your thoughts on it!The more I think about it, the more I feel I should follow up with a trio (ie: minuet - trio - minuet). Maybe something a little more light-hearted - say in D-major? What I find a little odd is that I started the minuet in F-major and ended up in g-minor... Umm... I've tried a couple of F-major codas but I keep hearing the ending in g-minor - as if the piece wants to continue. Maybe the g-minor coda could lead to the trio?Thanks again for your time!Be well,Alp

Hello! And welcome to the site!

Well, right off the bat, I would try and post a .PDF when you want to post a score - not everyone uses Sibelius :toothygrin: . As for the music, well, what I hear is a simple and short minuet. I found it quite pleasant, you kept it interesting while keeping it simple. I think it would be fun to hear you tackle more complex forms - two-voice minuets in this style are fun, but can't support a very long piece.

As for the harmony, I think you need to learn to use cadences effectively. If you want your melody to stay in F major, you need to reaffirm the tonality from time to time with a V-i progression (in this case, C7 - F). If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm pretty sure there are articles on the wiki or in the lessons thread on the subject of harmony (I haven't checked). I think it would help you to learn and grow if you mastered "classical" harmony. But the piece you uploaded is very good for a composer that is starting out!

Thank you so much for your kind words ParanoidFreak! (Oh dear- that almost sounded like an insult!)

Could you help me with the following as well, please:

1) Ideally, I'd like to convert this into a woodwind quartet (no idea if I can pull it off though!). I want the piano version to stand on its own, albeit as a small and simple piece - a bit like the 'beginner' pieces in the Der Erste Bach album. That said, in one sense I intended this almost as a note to myself - you know, an outline of the harmony and melodic contours. I wanted to keep the texture (is this the right word?) as open (?) as possible so that I'd feel as if I were still inventing rather than just arranging for the quartet.

My question is: Is it too simplistic? Or would it be acceptable as a short, beginner's piece?

2) When I post the pdf score, could you point out a few places you feel would benefit from further V-I progression to affirm the tonality? The first ending of part-b ties it (or rather: tries to!) from G-minor back to F-major for the repeat. The second time around, I ended the sequence in G-minor.

If I were to leave it as is (ie as a minuet only), I guess it would be a little weird to end in a different tone than the one you started. But would the second, G-minor ending work if it is going to lead to a trio in D-major? So that the opening of the trio (tonic of D) would sound like the dominant of the G-minor tonic the minuet 'ended' in. (ie G minor I ---> V / D-major I) Would that work to make one part flow into the other or is that just sloppy on my part?

Thanks again for your insightful comments. <img src="http://network.youngcomposers.com/elgg/ipb/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif" alt=":)" />

PS: Good point about the pdf! I'll look into it and see if I can figure out how to get Sibelius to save as a pdf file. Would a scorch version be acceptable as well?

Hmm... Is it not possible to format text into paragraphs?

I wrote it out as separate paragraphs but it appears to have merged into one unintelligible 'blob' of text...

This is a very loose interpretation of minuet form. :P Minuets are usually very strict in form and are definitely strict in feel. This one isn't, not that it has to be. Just know that when musicians read the title, they will be caught a little off-guard that it isn't a minuet. It's like calling a march a waltz. You can do it if you want to be interesting, but it's not a waltz just because you say it is.

That aside.

I think the fugal suggestions are kinda interesting. It's like a fugue with minuet thrown in there to keep it separate. I do agree with Hugo that the cadences leave something to be desired in their setup and followup. The literal meaning of cadence is "rest." The big ones need to have a sense of harmonic rest. And the small ones need to have more substance than to immediately travel to another chord every single time.

Not bad at all, n00b! ;) Thanks for sharing, keep it up! :happy:

[edit]Oh, PS. The text is blobby because you posted directly on the upload network. The script there is different from the forum. You can fix it by posting here rather than there, OR simply click "edit" and "save changes" right then and there and your formatting should be observed.

Thanks for the comments! I'm learning a lot from these observations.

A few follow-up questions:

1) MINUET FORM: Peter, I'm a bit confused. I thought I was following the minuet form rather closely?

The only book I have on composition is Schoenberg's "Fundamentals of Musical Composition" (eds Strang and Stein), so I looked it up again:

As regards rhythm & tempo: "The only specific rhythmic feature of a minuet is the metre: 3/4 (or, rarely, 3/8). [...][He goes on to say that the minuet is distinguished from eg waltzes in terms of tempo in that the tempo of the minuet is more moderate. (He then mentions the minuets of Beethoven's Symp 1 & 8 as notable exceptions/extremes.)] [...] [blah blah blah...] and the harmony changes more frequently than in the scherzo and other dance forms.

"The minuet originated as a rustic dance and was adapted by the court in the 17th century. In its earliest days the minuet dance [had the following rhythm]: 2 (half note) 4 (quarter) / 4 88 88 / 2 4 / 4 88 4. [NB: I can't really type it out. Here's a wiki link with a helpful visual/note version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuet]" [...] "However, from the Baroque period onwards this specific rhythm was seldom used and no longer considered to be a necessary feature of the minuet form. [in literature], minuets appear as independent pieces or as middle movements in cyclic forms such as the suite, symphony or sonata."

As regards form: "The minuet is an A-B-A1 form, quite similar to the small ternary form. The distinguishing feature of the minuet form is its /:A:/:BA1:/ structure. [Whilst inventing melodies], the fact that the B-section must follow the first A-section then the A-1 section has to be taken into consideration."

This is a very loose interpretation of minuet form. Minuets are usually very strict in form and are definitely strict in feel. This one isn't, not that it has to be. Just know that when musicians read the title, they will be caught a little off-guard that it isn't a minuet. It's like calling a march a waltz. You can do it if you want to be interesting, but it's not a waltz just because you say it is.

Could you point out which parts/measures deviate from the form so that I can align them? The way I tried to mirror the /:A:/:BA1:/ format --> A (m1-8): / B (m9-16) + A1 (m17-24: transposed and with slight variation of the motives) : /

I'd really like to learn more about forms. I would be very grateful if you could walk me through the features of a minuet. Or perhaps refer me to a written source that discusses this?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, should I make a new thread in either the lesson or the Q/A board on the minuet form? Would anyone else consider this to be a good topic to examine with the teachers here?

2) CADENCES: Duly noted. Good to learn that! I've made some changes to incorporate both of your suggestions and will post a new version shortly.

1) MINUET FORM: Peter, I'm a bit confused. I thought I was following the minuet form rather closely?

The only book I have on composition is Schoenberg's "Fundamentals of Musical Composition" (eds Strang and Stein), so I looked it up again:

As regards rhythm & tempo: "The only specific rhythmic feature of a minuet is the metre: 3/4 (or, rarely, 3/8). [...][He goes on to say that the minuet is distinguished from eg waltzes in terms of tempo in that the tempo of the minuet is more moderate. (He then mentions the minuets of Beethoven's Symp 1 & 8 as notable exceptions/extremes.)] [...] [blah blah blah...] and the harmony changes more frequently than in the scherzo and other dance forms.

"The minuet originated as a rustic dance and was adapted by the court in the 17th century. In its earliest days the minuet dance [had the following rhythm]: 2 (half note) 4 (quarter) / 4 88 88 / 2 4 / 4 88 4. [NB: I can't really type it out. Here's a wiki link with a helpful visual/note version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuet]" [...] "However, from the Baroque period onwards this specific rhythm was seldom used and no longer considered to be a necessary feature of the minuet form. [in literature], minuets appear as independent pieces or as middle movements in cyclic forms such as the suite, symphony or sonata."

As regards form: "The minuet is an A-B-A1 form, quite similar to the small ternary form. The distinguishing feature of the minuet form is its /:A:/:BA1:/ structure. [Whilst inventing melodies], the fact that the B-section must follow the first A-section then the A-1 section has to be taken into consideration."

Well, first of all, remember it's a dance. Hemiola and and mixed meter are not characteristic of pre-classical dance music! ;D

Secondly, the piece you wrote is not in proper ternary or rounded binary form. If you want to be strictly formal regarding pre-modern works, the harmonic progression is just as important as the thematic material in repetition. When the A theme comes back, it needs to be in the original key and not modulate from there. Incidentally, I can't remember if it's is a RULE or just a commonality, but I believe rounded binary pieces modulate BEFORE the first repeat so that when it comes back and DOESN'T modulate, it's different (hence A' as opposed to A). I'm pretty sure it's not a hard and fast 'rule', though, as rules go.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, should I make a new thread in either the lesson or the Q/A board on the minuet form? Would anyone else consider this to be a good topic to examine with the teachers here?

Form is not my forte, obviously. That'd definitely be a good idea. :)