3 movements from my new piece - Partita

Hi all!

These are the three inner movements of my new piano partita. There is also an introductory movement and a final, stylized gigue. I had some difficulties in exporting a MIDI rendering for those two movements, so they are not included here. There are strong thematic and sectional connections across each movement, so they do make a little less sense this way than they would in full context. Just bear that in mind while listening.

I'd love any thoughts on the music, the piece is for a good friend of mine and I'd like to give it to them in tip-top shape!

PARTITA 2-4.pdf

Hi @mercurypickles!

Danse - I love the wacky/quirky nature of this Prokofiev-esque piece!  The parallel b9's in the melody also add a lot to the character of it.  Makes it sound like a dancing clown or something!  Haha.  Also - I think if there were 4 8th note pick-ups to this it could easily be considered a Gavotte.  Or if it had a quarter note or two 8th note pick-ups it could also be a Bourree.  But since it doesn't have either of those just calling it a "Danse" certainly fits!

Ricercar - for me this is perhaps the most formless and indistinct part of the suite.  In the beginning, when listening with the score it looked like maybe it had more of a resemblance to a canon than a ricercar, which I presume to be a slow/early form of a fugue.  I find it really difficult to hear any independent voices in this piece which I think is supposed to be a display of contrapuntal knack.  It just sounds like the top voice gets the emphasis making it seem like a homophonic piece rather than polyphonic.

Pavane - This one also has some very interesting harmonic inflections!  The recurring motif is easily identifiable throughout the piece and there's actually more voice independence here than in the ricercar imo.  I also think this might fit under the description of an instrumental version of a dance that has kind of lost some of its dance-like sprightly-ness.

Thanks for sharing these!  I hope to eventually hear the whole suite - overall I definitely found these enjoyable!

@PeterthePapercomPoser

Thank you so much for your reply!

If I can get better recordings of these pieces I’ll send them, that aside:

- I think you’re right about the “wacky/quirky” quality to this “Danse.” I certainly don’t think it could be called anything else. It was actually meant as an homage to Poulenc, something shared throughout the set. This whole partita is more or less a tribute to Les Six (and to a lesser extent, Ravel). When I hear this piece, though, I start to imagine one of the evil muppets (like Animal, or the bomb guy) just staring at you. Bare eye contact. No looking away. Just that muppet, and this music is the illustration of that moment. (The italian tempo/expressive indication literally translates to “Fast and a little bit evil.”)

- This truly is the fault of poor audio rendering. When played on an actual instrument, even my fairly poor keyboard skills yielded interesting results. This is a very personal piece. There have been some difficult things going on around me and I needed an outlet. For a long time I’ve had something of a block when it comes to just creating music out of emotion; I always create in abstraction, or at least, tend to. That’s been breaking down a little bit recently, and this was the product of it. It was the first piece completed in the set.

- This Pavane is a revision of a much earlier piece. It was in my first year of composing, I joined this forum and this was one of my “Nocturnes” (I have not written any nocturnes I would consider part of my works, aside from a secret project I may reveal later). Anyway, it was very repetitive, and dull. The former quality was kept in this piece, but reworked with a more mature understanding of counterpoint and rhythmic theory. Honestly, I consider this to be nothing more than a real, true-to-vision version of that little piano piece. I just didn’t have the technique to write it the way I wanted to back then.