Piano Quartet in C minor - 2nd movement added 3/23/07

Very nice work! That theme is like gold.

Seriously. I think you should finish it at some point. It is really good. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

And at long last, I've got a finished movement! First movement of anything I've completed in 19 months...

This is the first movement of a piano quartet that I've been working on for almost 3 years now (as a medical student, I simply don't have much time to compose except during breaks); you may have seen fragments of this quartet in Works-In-Progress over the past year. It's pretty close to a standard sonata allegro opening movement, with a slow introduction, and a somewhat abbreviated recapitulation. I've aimed to build every aspect of the movement motivically - not only the themes and other melodies that are heard, but also the background material.

Some revisions may still be made, but I believe this is ready to be declared a complete movement. Without further ado, here it is, in MIDI format:

Symphony No 2 I done1.MUS

Edit: Sibelius file added.

Adagio for solo viola no.2.MUS

The begining theme sounds very familer.

Very !

Saul, you may have heard it on music-scores.com when I first started working on it more than three years ago. I posted snippets in a whole bunch of places hoping to get feedback when I was starting the piece.

Yes, it's been that long.

Saul, you may have heard it on music-scores.com when I first started working on it more than three years ago. I posted snippets in a whole bunch of places hoping to get feedback when I was starting the piece.

Yes, it's been that long.

How you doing ?

Still the theme sounds familier from years back.

that is mighty impressive, and your doing medicine?! sheeesh hate to see how good you are at that!!

The long Work paid off. This is piece is really Amazing! Wonderful flowing and the Formual is very well. You can be proud to work such a long time on this piece, it really paid off!

FL

This piece is outstanding. Can't wait to see what you'll do for the 2nd and 3rd movts.

Very nice!

I can't wait to hear the rest!

Hey,

Really excellent work - as I'm sure you know by now. very powerful, great development, great orchestration. Great job!

I can't really give you objective criticism, but here are my two cents, purely from a subjective viewpoint:

I wish your themes, harmonies and figurations were a little more edgy. Your style seems a little too conservative right now, which gives the piece sort of a "movie score" feel. That's not a bad thing, but I think you could do great things with more original classical music. In my opinion, I think you should be taking more risks than you are taking right now, just to speed up your development as a composer.

Again, you don't have to listen to me, this is a great piece.

Keep up the good work,

_MW

The first movement of my piano quartet has been RECORDED by a mostly-med-student quartet. Enjoy!

Piano Quartet in C Minor - 1 Allegro

Performed by:

Amy Baughman (USC Keck MS II), Violin

Andrew Hsieh (USC Keck MS II), Viola

Erin Gutierrez (USC Keck MS III), Cello

Daniel Poon (Caltech Sr), Piano

Recording and sound editing by Dan Naylor (USC Keck MS II).

Recorded on March 5, 2007 at Avery House Piano Lounge, Caltech.

Other movements are still being worked on.

I loved listening to the live performance. I'll review this someday when the other movements are finished.

Wow. Amazing work.

the live performance is funny, its kind of out of tune in alot of places. lost of people seems to be full of praise for this. i didnt like it that much it was a bit boring it is not that good in my opinion but i seem to be the only one must be my ears.

If you don't like the recording, try the midi. It's more cohesive in the midi, and the piece needs that to fully make sense.

what im saying is that its in 'major works' so im guessing hes a seasoned composer and for me the piece was that inspiring. it never told me anything changed my mood except to make that moment in my life duller. Not that it was particularly bad i just didnt bond with it like i do for so many of the compositions on here.

Finished the second movement last night... attaching it to the initial post.

Well, very impressive.

A bit too monotonous for my taste but I still found the peice very enjoyable.

Just a quick question. How many movements were you originally planning on?

Whatever. Keep up the good work! :whistling:

Well, it's now been 2 weeks since I posted the 2nd movement, and only one comment (and a short one at that).

Which is surprising, because I think there are actually quite a few technical points in that movement worth discussing. Form, in particular - I'm not sure if I'm being too repetitive at the end, for example, and also not entirely sure of whether there's really a climax at any point.

Second movement comments?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Hey Andrew!

Just got round to listening to the 2 movements!

I have to say that I'm impressed by your effort and your cohecinvess (if there is such a word :S).

I don't have sibelius, sadly, and the known plug in for browsers somehow does not work for my computer (scortch is it?). So if you could make a pdf file again from sibelius I would be most grateful for the 2nd movement.

From what I can tell you really like classical music, with the full sense of the word, at the classical period. Nothing wrong with that, I'm just mentinoing it.

The 2 movements are touching, there are no technical errors on the instruments and everything seems to work. (around 2:30 on the 2nd movement there are many notes held. You might want to check that out, as it actually creates a cluster :D)

Your development, while very "correct" is lacking any adventurous ideas behind and thus can become a bit cliched, but also boring... Especially the 1st movement, as the 2nd is much more interesting.

some ideas you could try, would be to explore more extreme registers in the piano, other chords, and other technics of playing with the strings. Other wise it is like having a synth with 1000s of sounds and only using 1. You could try pizz, tremolo, sul pont and other techniques, which are also used inthe classical period. The score could also use some work, but I don't know how much you're up to, and since you already got a recording (which btw, well done! It's great! and I admire your passion), maybe you don't need that. But generally more dynamics, more articulations, more bowings, more of everything could benefit the score (I'm talking about the pdf of the 1st movement, right?)

Other than that these are really nice works, and I can honestly "see" you laying to bed a minute before falling asleep, thinking about this music.

Nikolas

PS. I was really touched by your 2nd movemenet which is quite lovely. Thanks :P

Man, is this world -small-! I do a search for "faure 'piano quartet' analysis" on Google and find someone talking about a Piano Quartet in c whose second movement was published in March. I think to myself, "wait, didn't I record a first movement in, like, February?"

I follow the link, and lo and behold, it's you, Andrew, it's you!

Second movement, eh? Do you have a pdf of the score? Or maybe I should just get Sibelius, but I don't know where. Meanwhile, I shall have to satisfy myself with the midi.

Check the midi - maybe it's just me, but the file I got seemed corrupted. Just listen to the track - some distance in, there's a large and persistent bass dissonance (sounds like piano tremolo?). I don't think you put it there: you may want to try to repost the midi. And in the case you -did- actually mean it, the midi certainly doesn't do it justice. In any case, I haven't seen the score, so I really don't know.

From what I can make out over the noise my computer is giving me, though, I can still recognize a lot of what comes through from the first movement. Impressively done: it works rather well. I'm sure the second movement's structure would be much more intelligible with real dynamics and timbres instead of a midi. The organization reminds me of late Schubert, although the most daring and definitely non-Schubert thing to me is that you start in c and end in f. I still don't quite understand it, which is why I'm going to wait until I see the score before I nitpick.

Since I know the old idea for the fourth movement, I'm really interested in hearing the Scherzo. I'm also interested in why you're rewriting the finale.

Hope to hear from you,

Daniel Poon

I just checked the MIDI and you're right. Right from the beginning, some of the notes seem to be missing... and what sounds like a big cluster chord may be all the missing notes up to that point coming in at once?!

I'll re-upload it later tonight.

Canzano . . . . a piano quartet can refer to a piano and three other of anything. You even get quite a few 'piano quintets' written for four players at two pianos.

I shall listen to this piece once it is reuploaded. By the sounds of popular opinion, it's certainly worth the time.

I thought this was a very nice piece. Good use of rhythms. Also, I enjoyed the passages with hemiolas, as well as tying notes over the barlines; it really kept me on my toes, wondering what would come next.

A few suggestions: I thought some of the modulations were less than satisfactory. Maybe if you use the circle of fifths a bit more. I find the movement of the half step to be very important to musical drive; you could put in more chords that beg to move by half step, like diminished 7ths. Also, consistently keeping the lower register open by using 5ths and 8vas might provide a more solid groundwork to the melody.

These are just minor quibbles. Overall, I thought you demonstrated a skillful sense of flow and melodic interest. Keep up the good work, and I hope to hear your piece in its entirety!