Allegretto in A

Any feedback would be appreciated. I dont know whether the piece works. 

I think this is a great place from which to start! The character of the piece is very cheery and the harmonic language, in my mind, follows closely with traditional harmony. In general, I felt that it was a complete, short piece!

I think that one thing you could consider would be rewriting the repeated sections and trying to vary them! This could mean introducing more contrasting rhythms or experimenting with different harmonies. The goal of doing this would be to move out of your comfort zone a bit, and to do so in a relatively strict form (of an AABB, for example).

As more of a sidenote, I am not sure what program you are using (so it is probably at fault, and so I wouldn't recommend getting into a brawl with it) but some of the engraving of the piece is very strange. I felt it might be useful to point out a few things, just in case you aren't sure yourself! 

For example, in bb. 1-2, you have two voices in the RH and I would probably add rests to show when voice 2 starts and ends; this also would clear up some confusing with stems pointing in different directions, like in b. 2. Even if the music isn't using a load of complex rhythms, it is a good practice to get into!

Also, slurs follow some strange rules in this program, with the second group of quavers in b. 3 having the slur upside down. Even some noteheads are reversed as in bb. 10-11. (LH). Clef changes are a bit strange, as you wouldn't reiterate the key signature in an instance at b. 14. And, with b. 17, you would have a cautionary clef at the end of b. 16 with the bass clef being where the treble clef is at b. 17. Again, I imagine you might have limited control over this, but it is all worth mentioning (I noticed the names of the instruments above each staff, which isn't necessary, but  I assume the program disallows it from being any other way).

With the name change, I am not sure why it changed to "in D", but overall I think you did a nice job. My suggestion is to keep writing, and perhaps make some adjustments to this piece. Best of luck!

Thank you Jared for taking the time to review my work and for your detailed comments.

I agree with you about repeats, in the 18th century repeats were nearly always varied with ornamentation and embellishment and I've been looking into how performers would go about doing this and after a bit of Google exploring I found an essay written in the 1700's on the subject.

In it the author laments about the decline of variation in performances of repeated sections and he details how to tastefully vary the music to avoid monotony. It occurred to me that whenever I compose I should leave out the repeat bars and just copy and paste the section and then vary it according to how performers would have done so back then. 

I'll take a closer look at my engraving and see what I can do to polish the presentation of the piece.

Hi -  charming light melody to start your day!  I also see this as a good basic foundation for further development.  Why not play a bit with it and see all the variations you can create?  Further more why not have the piano part be a bit more playful and interactive between the treble and bass parts?

9 hours ago, Papageno said:

Thank you Jared for taking the time to review my work and for your detailed comments.

I agree with you about repeats, in the 18th century repeats were nearly always varied with ornamentation and embellishment and I've been looking into how performers would go about doing this and after a bit of Google exploring I found an essay written in the 1700's on the subject.

In it the author laments about the decline of variation in performances of repeated sections and he details how to tastefully vary the music to avoid monotony. It occurred to me that whenever I compose I should leave out the repeat bars and just copy and paste the section and then vary it according to how performers would have done so back then. 

I'll take a closer look at my engraving and see what I can do to polish the presentation of the piece.

 

That's really interesting! The period of time that comes to mind for me would be the transition between the Baroque and Enlightenment, with someone like C.P.E Bach. I find the form of some of his symphonies and concertos to be very dramatic and I think that it relates to the idea of varying material and developing a musical story. 

I feel that when you go in and start to consciously vary your material section to section it's a good habit to get into!

On 7/30/2021 at 6:57 PM, MJFOBOE said:

Hi -  charming light melody to start your day!  I also see this as a good basic foundation for further development.  Why not play a bit with it and see all the variations you can create?  Further more why not have the piano part be a bit more playful and interactive between the treble and bass parts?

 

Thank you MJ

I did consider it for variations and may do so in the future. At the moment I'm composing shorter works to focus on the basics as I'm still a beginner. I recently bought a book of minuets for the piano by Haydn so I'm playing and studying them to get a better feel for music from that period.