Single-movement Sonatina

This is a piece where I experimented with romantic (or perhaps beyond romantic) harmonies. I was going to have a second movement but the materials were too disjointed and was abandoned so now I decided one is enough here. The opening theme is clearly copied inspired by "L'Apprenti sorcier".

Again not likely I will ever expand this piece anymore, but good experience nevertheless.

Hi PCC, welcome to the forums!

Glad you uploaded the score first! Sometimes users prefer to upload only the audio (understandable, specially if the material is done via DAW). However, I think it would be convenient if you uploaded an audio accompanying the score (even if it's digitally generated).

Regarding the music itself, it seems nicely engraved. Not much convinced (at sight) by the heavy parallel movement we have at Ms. 12-14 but on the other hand those passages at Ms. 17-18 and back at Ms. 41-52 seem promising to me. An audio would really come in handy, I insist.

There are some overlaps here and there (e.g: Ms. 57-59) you may want to fix.

Finally, what about the double bars placed here and there without seemingly much meaning? I would have thought they were used to mark a tempo change but there's not any at M24 (and instead there is one at M32). 

Is the allegro molto at M80 faster than the allegro molto that has been running since M41?

That'd be all for now, please consider my suggestion and in any case, thank you for sharing.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.


 

I must admit there are some engraving issues since I wasn't planning on letting the world see it originally lol

anyway I will add a computer generated sound file for the piece

thank you for the comments!

1 hour ago, PCC said:

I will add a computer generated sound file for the piece

Great! Thank you for uploading the audio. Turns out the passages that seemed a bit unconvincing at first sight do sound alright in the digital interpretation (well Ms. 53-57 don't convince me but I don't think they sound bad anyway). 

My only criticism apart from what I already have written: there are two moments where the music stops without a clue and then after a while it starts again. Perhaps not the wisest choice. However, you do you, and as long as you are convinced with the result, it is fine; I would just suggest you to consider whether these pauses (likely at the end of M66 and M79) are actually needed, or if there's no better way for you to do these transitions.

 

1 hour ago, PCC said:

thank you for the comments!

And again, thank you for sharing! It is always nice to spend some time into diving in anyone's piece here; I think you always kind of learn something even if you don't realize it at first.

Hope I have not been too dense.
Kind regards!!



 

I think I was a bit obsessed with Schubert's instrumental works at the time of writing this piece with all those pauses everywhere lol

Hello PCC,

The most bothersome thing about your piano rendition (not about the music itself and neither does it have to do with the poor quality of the piano sounds nor lack of any reverb) is that the chords and melody are performed at the same dynamic level.  A real pianist would bring out the melody which is higher in the hierarchy of musical importance than the other elements of the composition.  And this would greatly contribute to the clarity and bring out better the real intent behind the composers (yours) work.  Like for example, the chords in measures 8 and 12 - 14 - the most salient feature of those sections is the thickness of the chords rather than what imo should be the focus of those parts - the contour of the (chordal) melodic line.  Imo those parts would sound much better with the top note brought out (usually in Musescore I can do this by changing just the top notes velocity value to about +20 - bringing it into higher relief but I don't know if you have that capability in Noteflight).  But throughout the whole rest of the sonatina it would make it much more clear to listen to if the melody were brought out above the accompaniment - right now the melody and accompaniment are at the same level of importance (but since you're writing a homophonic work by definition there should be a hierarchy of importance with the accompaniment being less important than the melody - only in heterophonic or polyphonic works are two or more elements at the same level of importance).

Now on to the music - for a piece that starts like a Hanon exercise this turns out to be quite motivically interesting!  I can hear the relation that the main theme has to the introductory material.  Some of your musical gestures strike me as particularly British for some reason.  The Allegro Molto section at bar 41 sounds really robotic and rushed in this rendition which maybe, it wouldn't if it were played live.  But I like how you bring that section back in the coda - and a scale to round things off pretty satisfactorily imo!  Thanks for sharing!

Peter

Thanks for the detailed review!

This is made with musescore. And yes that is why I complain about generated sound files lol.

Maybe the reason the development seems short was that I was under a self-imposed constraint of "keep it short" for a sonatina, but I agree I did not do very much there except to lead back to the recap.

Curious what you mean by "British" gestures.

11 hours ago, PCC said:

Curious what you mean by "British" gestures.

The 7/4 bars (meas. 25 - 28) sound particularly Elgar-ish to me ... although it might just be me.  I don't even listen to Elgar that much.  LoL