Menuet for two flute and cello

Hi everyone! I wrote this classical (mostly Haydn) style menuet as a studie piece. I am applying to the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music (in Budapest, Hungary) this year, and I want to send in this menuet (it is a requirement). I am hoping some of you can help me out with ideas, how to make it more stylish, more accurate, wether I should extend it with a variation or not.

Dear @dormanzsombor,

Welcome to the forum!

For me the minuet is quite pleasant! 

The cello arpeggio marking in b.5-6, 19-20, 38 is quite unidiomatic writing since for double or triple stopping of strings the notes are written out without the arpeggios marking. I'm also not sure whether the triple stopping in b.5-6 and 19-20 can be played at all with the three notes holding. Maybe cellist can help! But if you want to play safe you can have broken chords there.

For me b.9-14 the contrasting section of the minuet is not contrasting since it remains in the dominant key. You can venture to more remote keys like the other closely related keys of B minor (supertonic minor), F# minor (relative minor), D major (subdominant major) before returning to the tonic A major in the reprise! 

I love in b.31 where you have interactions between the two flutes. You can for sure add more interactions between the instruments! Also giving the cello some melodic significance will be good as well! 

Is the instrumentation set by the academy? Why will you choose this particular combination? By thinking this you can give more colour to the piece!

14 hours ago, dormanzsombor said:

wether I should extend it with a variation or not.

It really depends. If there's no time limit for the piece and you want it, why not? There are many elements that can be varied later on!

Thanks for sharing and joining the forum!

Henry

It is a very nice minuet. I agree that the cello chords are not quite in the style, that goes more with a later romanticism.

Thank you for the comments, especially for the suggestions! I worked with it, I hope it became more stylish and more compact. Feel free to share thoughts about it, I still have about a month until the deadline.