Prelude in C# minor

Hi to all my fellow musicians.

Here's my latest piece for piano, that I spent the last two days writing.

Haven't quite finished the phrasing and dynamics yet.

I may possibly extend the work; but I'm not quite sure yet.

Hopefully I haven't accidentally stolen ideas from other pieces I've heard?

I know the initial chord progression of C#m to Am(maj7) came from a You Tube video; but can't remember which piece they were discussing. (Pretty sure it was from a film score; but can't remember which one.)

Anyway, hope you like it.

I wrote it for a concert in May. 

P.S. Can you guess which composer inspired me to write this?

(N.B. Revised scores will be posted below.)

Noticed a few hand clashes and enharmonic spelling errors today: so here's a revised draft.

Also made a tiny change in Bar 8 (left hand).

Hopefully better?

It's still a bit of a beast, with awkward hand-crossings; but I wrote it for someone with great technical skills! 

On playing this through myself tonight, I noticed a few further corrections and cautionaries that were required.

So here is my latest version of the score.

Hello @Alex Weidmann!

Nice mysterious Prelude!  I'm surprised that @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu hasn't reviewed it yet since it's in his favorite key!  🤣

I have a few technical nit-picks:  I've recently changed the way I write for piano through Musescore Studio 4 which I think might benefit you to hear about.  If you favor the Musesounds Piano as I now have come to prefer, then in order to have more control over balance between the most important melody notes and less important background chords/figurations, you could actually load up two (or more) separate pianos and change the way they're displayed in the Layout section of the program (by deleting the bass clef portion of the right hand piano and deleting the treble clef portion of the left hand one).  Then, not only will you be able to change the balance between the hands in the mixer, but you'll be able to give separate dynamics to each hand - an amount of control which you would lack with just one grand-staff track.  Although you'd have to put in pedal marks for both tracks, and hide them in the top track.  As well as hiding dynamics that are redundant.  But I think bringing out the most important notes in each chord and passage will greatly improve at least my impression of the work.

Another thing is the tempo.  I noticed that you're trying to create a sense of novelty through the use of unusual rhythms and meters.  I think it could be even more effective if you included an ebb and flow to the tempo by simulating a sort of constant rubato with choice accel.'s and rit.'s here and there.  I can refer you to examples in my own catalog if you'd like, where such rubato gives a very satisfying result (at least in my opinion) and cases where the piece would suffer greatly from the mechanicality of the rendition if not for the rubato.  Some places to consider including an accel. and rit.:  bar 30 accel. into 31 I think would be a nice paired with that crescendo you already have.

Other than that, nice job!  I also question the interruption of the expected 4/4 flow of the beginning melody with the 9/8 measure - I think that's unnecessary.  Thanks for sharing!

6 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Nice mysterious Prelude!  I'm surprised that @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu hasn't reviewed it yet since it's in his favorite key!  

I'm on a trip lol

Very nice dreamy, yet mysterious and passionate prelude!

I like the frequent changes of the time signature. While initially looking complicated, the rhythm of the piece has an intuitive pulse and a continuous flow.

I noticed, that your score is without a key signature. But since you often change harmony from keys with sharps to keys with flats, this decision avoids that the score is cluttered with natural signs. And when listening and reading the score I like that the more serene passages correspond with the flats, while the more passionate passages feature more sharps!

In some bars, I would like to see more octave brackets to make it easier to read when playing. Personally, I refuse to read more than three or four ledger lines. However, I agree, that too many octave brackets disrupt the visual impression of the runs in the score.

I completely agree with @PeterthePapercomPoser's suggestions for improving the recording by “fine-tuning” the articulation, dynamics, and tempo for each individual hand or even voice. Since I do this with my piano works, I know that it is a lot of work to literally maintain two scores, one for the printout and one for the recording. But it's really worth the effort to achieve a sound that is much closer to a live performance.

Thank you for sharing!