How to make a violin sonata with piano accompaniment from scratch

Hello! So recently my music appreciation teacher has given me an opportunity for a final project, and that is to compose a piece of music 1-4 minutes long. I really want yo create a short Violin Sonata with piano accompaniment (or rather a solo violin as a sonata has multiple movements) however I’m having trouble creating a melody and the accompaniment for the melody. What are some tips for writing for this? Also I want it to be romantic era. Thanks!

Hey @Gabriel Carlisle,

20 hours ago, Gabriel Carlisle said:

Hello! So recently my music appreciation teacher has given me an opportunity for a final project, and that is to compose a piece of music 1-4 minutes long. I really want yo create a short Violin Sonata with piano accompaniment (or rather a solo violin as a sonata has multiple movements) however I’m having trouble creating a melody and the accompaniment for the melody. What are some tips for writing for this? Also I want it to be romantic era. Thanks!

What mood do you want it to be? Lovely, gorgeous, grand, happy, tragic, painful, solemn? The setting of mood helps your finding the right inspiration. Do you want to include some narratives? Do you find particularly likings to some chords and harmonic progression? What’s the tempo? How thick and quick do you want your piano accompaniment is? How many percentage would you give the melody to the piano? How chromatic will you want the melody be? What key is in it? What form will it be? Ternary or other forms? Which composer’s works do you want to imitate from? Hope these questions help!

Henry

Thanks so much henry! these are all very good questions i should be asking myself. Instead of making this a song for my class i should really consider adding a narrative element to it to derive inspiration and to convey a sense of emotion as well. I do want to ask however considering the piece itself, how exactly do I write for a solo violin well? I'm not rly asking for basics I just want to do this well and to keep the player in mind. I do want this piece to have a certain difficulty to it so that it will challenge those. Think Saint Saens Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso on level of difficulty and playability. Also writing the piano part with an aspect of complexity in mind (not just simple chords).

3 hours ago, Gabriel Carlisle said:

I do want to ask however considering the piece itself, how exactly do I write for a solo violin well? I'm not rly asking for basics I just want to do this well and to keep the player in mind. I do want this piece to have a certain difficulty to it so that it will challenge those. Think Saint Saens Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso on level of difficulty and playability.

I see that from your profile you don't play the violin (me too). What kind of difficulty you have in your mind? I think there are many violin experts here like @Aria Donn, @ComposaBoi, @expert21 and they may answer your question better. From my own experience the slurs and taking care of which strings play which notes will be crucial to violin writing (which is useless comment LoL!).

3 hours ago, Gabriel Carlisle said:

Also writing the piano part with an aspect of complexity in mind (not just simple chords).

For piano writing, it's usually the piano to fill up the space when violin is playing the melody. You can definitely try different rhythmic patterns for example triplets, semiquavers, having polyrhythms with the violin as in Brahms's violin sonatas e.g. I also strongly suggest the piano has its own pianistic version of the violin theme to vary it a bit more!

Henry

Yeah I have a violin but never got to learn bc of it’s difficult. I was planning (since this piece will be very short unfortunately around 4 minutes in length) on using a simple ABA form of Ternary with an extra ending part. For the piano in the second A section I’ll allow it to play more of a lead role while the violin will take a backseat until the end of the second A section. As for the musicians you mentioned, shall I message them? Again thanks so much for this it helps a ton!

9 minutes ago, Gabriel Carlisle said:

As for the musicians you mentioned, shall I message them?

Let see will they reply to this thread haha!

9 minutes ago, Gabriel Carlisle said:

I was planning (since this piece will be very short unfortunately around 4 minutes in length) on using a simple ABA form of Ternary with an extra ending part. For the piano in the second A section I’ll allow it to play more of a lead role while the violin will take a backseat until the end of the second A section.

Yeah that would be great, as violin is more expressive than piano in terms of shaping the melody and it will catch more eyeballs if it's reserved until the end!!

Henry

It seems I have been summoned....

Unfortunately it's difficult to explain the ins and outs of violin writing in any reasonable span of text, especially virtuoso writing. The more difficult you want to make your part, the more nuanced of an understanding of the instrument you must have, and this comes with actual hands-on experience playing the instrument at that level.

Of course that isn't to say you can't still write virtuoso music. Saint-Saens was hardly a violinist, after all, but many such non-violinist composers seeking to write difficult violin music did seek the advice and feedback of violinists in their compositional process, often sending them drafts and allowing them to make edits. They employed what is most likely the best approach to such things: write whatever you want, and worry about whether it's playable later. Violins are probably more agile than you may think they are.

I'd heavily advise against just trying to create virtuoso writing purely for its own sake. That is a surefire way to heavily compromise the musical integrity of what you're writing and it can really destroy any musical inspiration you may have.

Concentrate on writing a nice tune first, then try to develop it with flowery embellishments calling for virtuoso technique. Not only will the fundamental idea underlying the piece be clearer to the audience, since its first appearance will be clean and unornamented, but I honestly even think the virtuoso writing will come easier after that.

Interestingly, something I wrote a while back comes surprisingly close to fitting the profile of what you seem to want to write: my Romance in D (2020). It's monothematic (i.e. there is no "B theme" to speak of) and a little longer than your target, but it is still steeped in romantic-era conventions and is basically in ternary form with a coda (the middle section is bookended by the double bars). The accompaniment is fairly simple throughout (mostly block chords and arpeggios); you don't need to spend a lot of time fretting about making something super novel or complicated. The only real secret is an attempt to adhere to good voice leading, particularly with the bassline, though you may also hear some somewhat melodic-sounding lines in the right hand as well, which makes it sound interesting, even if it's very simplistic at a fundamental level. (This is why we study Baroque counterpoint -- its principles are universally applicable to all common-practice tonal music.)

You'll notice I used many of the strategies I promote here, such as presenting a relatively unadorned melody at first before embellishing it the next time around. Like I was saying, the exact strategies for achieving good virtuoso violin writing are hard to put into a small number of words, but obviously everything I wrote here in this piece is playable (since both me and my accompanist played it), so similar-looking techniques in your piece should also be playable.

I took a listen to your previous work, and it seems you already have the ability to write a good melody based on a motivic cell, so I won't go into that much, but I do want to reiterate that it is a very powerful compositional technique that I also use in my Romance. (My main motivic cell is a rising triad in quarter notes.) It lends the piece a great sense of unity and forms powerful recall associations in the listener's mind that keep them believing that whatever material you're showing them now really does belong in the same piece with what they heard before.

Just be careful to avoid writing anything that is impossible on an elementary level, such as double-stops in which both notes can only be played on the G-string. Otherwise, focus on compositional integrity, substance, and sound first. The explicit aims for virtuosity come later.

19 minutes ago, Aria Donn said:

It seems I have been summoned....

Unfortunately it's difficult to explain the ins and outs of violin writing in any reasonable span of text, especially virtuoso writing. The more difficult you want to make your part, the more nuanced of an understanding of the instrument you must have, and this comes with actual hands-on experience playing the instrument at that level.

Of course that isn't to say you can't still write virtuoso music. Saint-Saens was hardly a violinist, after all, but many such non-violinist composers seeking to write difficult violin music did seek the advice and feedback of violinists in their compositional process, often sending them drafts and allowing them to make edits. They employed what is most likely the best approach to such things: write whatever you want, and worry about whether it's playable later. Violins are probably more agile than you may think they are.

I'd heavily advise against just trying to create virtuoso writing purely for its own sake. That is a surefire way to heavily compromise the musical integrity of what you're writing and it can really destroy any musical inspiration you may have.

Concentrate on writing a nice tune first, then try to develop it with flowery embellishments calling for virtuoso technique. Not only will the fundamental idea underlying the piece be clearer to the audience, since its first appearance will be clean and unornamented, but I honestly even think the virtuoso writing will come easier after that.

Interestingly, something I wrote a while back comes surprisingly close to fitting the profile of what you seem to want to write: my Romance in D (2020). It's monothematic (i.e. there is no "B theme" to speak of) and a little longer than your target, but it is still steeped in romantic-era conventions and is basically in ternary form with a coda (the middle section is bookended by the double bars). The accompaniment is fairly simple throughout (mostly block chords and arpeggios); you don't need to spend a lot of time fretting about making something super novel or complicated. The only real secret is an attempt to adhere to good voice leading, particularly with the bassline, though you may also hear some somewhat melodic-sounding lines in the right hand as well, which makes it sound interesting, even if it's very simplistic at a fundamental level. (This is why we study Baroque counterpoint -- its principles are universally applicable to all common-practice tonal music.)

You'll notice I used many of the strategies I promote here, such as presenting a relatively unadorned melody at first before embellishing it the next time around. Like I was saying, the exact strategies for achieving good virtuoso violin writing are hard to put into a small number of words, but obviously everything I wrote here in this piece is playable (since both me and my accompanist played it), so similar-looking techniques in your piece should also be playable.

I took a listen to your previous work, and it seems you already have the ability to write a good melody based on a motivic cell, so I won't go into that much, but I do want to reiterate that it is a very powerful compositional technique that I also use in my Romance. (My main motivic cell is a rising triad in quarter notes.) It lends the piece a great sense of unity and forms powerful recall associations in the listener's mind that keep them believing that whatever material you're showing them now really does belong in the same piece with what they heard before.

Just be careful to avoid writing anything that is impossible on an elementary level, such as double-stops in which both notes can only be played on the G-string. Otherwise, focus on compositional integrity, substance, and sound first. The explicit aims for virtuosity come later.

Thx so much for responding to my summon!!! I really really appreciate this!!! You are the absolute violin virtuosic here on YC.

Henry

Thanks so much! This has helped me a ton! I will definitely take heed to this advice!

what keys work best for the violin? And also how many sharps/flats would you say is too many?

Any key can work on the violin in the hands of a professional, but it is best to use keys that make use of the open strings, or keys based around the open strings (the major/minors of G,D,A,E). 

Ok thanks so much!