5 Textures || 5. Cyclic

I've been composing for about a year now, I'm a junior in high school. Here's a messy, at least not computer generated performance of a piece I just recently finished. It's part of a set of 5 preludes that represent different textures. This is definitely the densest writing I have attempted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpKQkvI_aoc

Welcome to the forum, @veps!

This is quite a piece you've submitted for your foray into YC. You must be something of an accomplished pianist to have been able to play that!

The music, too, is phenomenal. Because of your use of whole tone scales, it had strong Debussy overtones (particularly the opening to his Pour le piano), although I sensed something of the Russian Romantics in there, too—Rachmaninov, Medtner, etc. But it was definitely your voice, not theirs, contained in all those notes.

You are right; it is dense, but it's more than just a bunch of arpeggiated chords mixed in between bombastic martellato passages. It is evident you put some thought into this regarding its development. The theme, no matter how simple it might have been, was teased out beautifully over the life of the piece, and there was enough variation in the style of play that it never seemed to get boring.

I have other comments, too, but it would be helpful to see more of your work. Please, submit the other preludes so I can hear those, too!!!

Best,
Jörfi

2 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

Welcome to the forum, @veps!

This is quite a piece you've submitted for your foray into YC. You must be something of an accomplished pianist to have been able to play that!

The music, too, is phenomenal. Because of your use of whole tone scales, it had strong Debussy overtones (particularly the opening to his Pour le piano), although I sensed something of the Russian Romantics in there, too—Rachmaninov, Medtner, etc. But it was definitely your voice, not theirs, contained in all those notes.

You are right; it is dense, but it's more than just a bunch of arpeggiated chords mixed in between bombastic martellato passages. It is evident you put some thought into this regarding its development. The theme, no matter how simple it might have been, was teased out beautifully over the life of the piece, and there was enough variation in the style of play that it never seemed to get boring.

I have other comments, too, but it would be helpful to see more of your work. Please, submit the other preludes so I can hear those, too!!!

Best,
Jörfi

 

The only other one I have is the first, and maybe second if I can find it, I'll post them shortly. I appreciate your feedback! Thanks for listening

Hi @veps,

First your playing is very sensitive and your skill is great!

I love how you use repeated patterns to a great effect in this prelude and for sure it's not boring at all! The pattern makes the music very flowing and always moving forward to give a sense of time to the music. It's for sure dense but it's dense in an illustrative and imaginative way!

Just for the scoring issue: the 14th-plets with a dotted rhythm in b.17 don't quite make sense actually and I feel like you can just remove all the dots! In b.24-27 I think you can just use three staffs instead of two to have the sustained of the RH in one independent staff for clearer score. In b.88-92 you can have the lower octaves of the right hand written in the LH part since it will be played by LH anyway (right?). Again these are minor issues comparing to the promising music materials you've presented us! Great job and hopefully to see more of your future works!

Henry

Although your language is quite impressionistic, there are only a few passages here and there which tend to remind me of Debussy or Ravel.  So I think you definitely have an individual voice in this piece!  Sometimes your playing is a bit heavier than would be expected of a piece by Debussy or Ravel.  The section at measure 51 is especially unique, and at 61 I feel like you're channeling Debussy.  I like how you end on the same tone on which you started, but I don't feel like its really a very adequate conclusion and it seems kind of unfinished imo.  Thanks for sharing!