Soliloquy for Piano No. 9

This is my 9th soliloquy for piano. The first 12 bars constitute a sonata beginning/fragment I had composed years ago. So this piece felt kind of like the YC challenges where we composed based on each others' themes, only in this case I composed a piece based on a theme from my 19 years younger self!

Here is the link to my 8th soliloquy for piano:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/archive/music/listen/6667/soliloquy-for-piano-no-8/

As attracted as I am to the idea of the Soliloquy, I have to say I like the theme here more than the piece itself, which I know sounds odd. I think this theme would have been fun to play around with and it sounds that way in the beginning but the chords that eventually show up in the left hand messed it up for me. The 16th notes that first show up in measure 18 and onward are also distracting. I don't like those parts. Your music has always been hit or miss for me. This one was a miss.

I tried to listen to your previous piano soliloquies for comparison but only the eighth would play for me. The others in the Archives seem to be inaccessible. Which is really unfortunate because I wanted to look for the Soliloquies that I liked the most and point out the aspects of them that made them better for me. If that issue is fixed I'll try and sift through it all (no small task given the sheer amount of your output on this site) and pick those out. Now that I have more free time than usual I'll give a shot at a third soliloquy myself.

14 hours ago, KJthesleepdeprived said:

As attracted as I am to the idea of the Soliloquy, I have to say I like the theme here more than the piece itself, which I know sounds odd. I think this theme would have been fun to play around with and it sounds that way in the beginning but the chords that eventually show up in the left hand messed it up for me. The 16th notes that first show up in measure 18 and onward are also distracting. I don't like those parts. Your music has always been hit or miss for me. This one was a miss.

I tried to listen to your previous piano soliloquies for comparison but only the eighth would play for me. The others in the Archives seem to be inaccessible. Which is really unfortunate because I wanted to look for the Soliloquies that I liked the most and point out the aspects of them that made them better for me. If that issue is fixed I'll try and sift through it all (no small task given the sheer amount of your output on this site) and pick those out. Now that I have more free time than usual I'll give a shot at a third soliloquy myself.

Thanks KJ for your review. I realize that the theme might be more promising than the piece, since it was intended as the beginning of an unrealized sonata! I myself was not entirely satisfied with the final chords (bars 31-4). In fact, after your review, I tried to revise them for almost two hours but came back to the original, being unable to settle on a better alternative. That is perhaps one of the reasons why I almost never revise pieces after I finish composing them. It seems that in this case, and at least as far as I as a composer am concerned, the initial creative judgement is always the right one. But I am more satisfied with the 16th notes which you found distracting. Had I expanded it into a sonata, those 16th notes might have functioned as a second theme.

It is unfortunate that the previous piano soliloquies I have posted do not show up. I have posted No.s 4-7 in addition to the No. 8 & 9. I will post the links below hoping that you can access them and look forward to hearing what you think of them.

I also look forward to your 3rd soliloquy.

http://www.youngcomposers.com/archive/music/listen/2651/soliloquy-for-piano-no-4/

http://www.youngcomposers.com/archive/music/listen/4218/soliloquy-for-piano-no-5/

http://www.youngcomposers.com/archive/music/listen/5333/soliloquy-for-piano-no-6/

http://www.youngcomposers.com/archive/music/listen/6396/soliloquy-for-piano-no-7/