Piano Trio in E

I was hoping to have my website up before I posted this piece so I could host the files there, but seeing as I'm lazy and not a very fast learner when it comes to HTML, I've decided to post this work the regular way.

This is my 'big piece' from this past semester. Much of the process I used to write this piece is a big haze for me. The piece was composed in about a month, and that was an extremely rushed, unhealthy month for me. I had 19 units of university classes on my hands to start with, so I wouldn't finish all my obligations until 8 or 9 PM at night, at which point I would make my Starbucks run, thoroughly inundate my system with the caffeine of a venti coffee, and then work in the practice room until I almost literally collapsed on the piano from exhaustion (I had to have enough energy for the bike ride home, after all.)

Looking back on the first movement, I don't really remember how I got started on it. I remember a lot of false starts and a lot of filled but useless manuscript paper, and I guess something meaningful came out of that. The climax of the second movement (you'll know it when you hear it) is what I built that movement around, and my starting point with the third was the main theme.

My compositional process with this piece was quite linear. I worked from the beginning and let my ear tell me what to write next. The most notable part of my process for this piece was the fact that for once I allowed myself to press the 'play' button on Finale to see what it sounded like. (I never do this.) What I found is that this allowed me to get a much clearer picture of the overall 'narrative arc' of the piece (a phrase attributed to a fellow composer at USC, Geoff Pope).

The greatest difficulty I had in composing this piece was silencing my own inner intellectual dialogue -- you know, that little voice that questions you ever step of the way with little things like "do you really want this note here" or "is this the direction you want this movement to take" or "is this phrase long enough" or "is that a good thing for the cello to do" or, well, I could go on and on. You know what I'm talking about. But once I got that little guy to shut up, the piece happened quite naturally. And quickly, I think.

After finishing the piece, I approached two friends of mine to get them to record it with me. We did this recording after about five rehearsals. I'm extremely happy with the quality of the first movement, the second movement is acceptable, and in the third we had some big issues. Oh well.

Well, I won't bore you with any more of my drivel. I hope you enjoy this. I prefer the first and second movements over the third, so if you only have time to listen to one, pick from those two. Though I'd be delighted if you could listen to all three!

The PDFs are attached. Here are the MP3's:

I

II

III

Alfera_Trio_1.pdf

Alfera_Trio_2.pdf

Alfera_Trio_3.pdf

Fantastic work Michael.

I really enjoyed your voice/style.

I can't really give detailed comments, as (thanks to savefile) the only full movement I could download was the first.

I'll say a couple of things though. (mostly pertaining to 1st mvmt)

In general, I thought you had very idiomatic piano trio writing, and you used your resources well.

Great use of triplets throughout the piece (mvmt 1, and what I got to hear of 2). In fact, your rhythm in general was pretty damn good. The buildup of tension partly created by rhythm worked very well.

At some points, I felt your textures were a little too sparse, but this isn't a major quibble.

I also felt that as you had a good theme, we maybe could have heard it a bit more, and there could have been some thematic development of it, but again - just a minor consideration.

Now - the changes into new tempos were very good (and handled very well by the players)

I LOVED the livlier Piu Mosso section at the end, and the Vivace.

The only problem there is that you had such a fantastic buildup, and then it has to be quite quickly dissipated.

The second movement is just too calm starting for the first movement to end with such a buildup.

I think that buildup is excellent, and the ending as it is is really dramatic and rather satisfying, but i think there needs to be some way of letting that tension out for longer.

I really enjoyed the whole thing, and it was well worth the hours you spent slaving on it! Well done! And well played (I found the first movement to be really well done, even though you (pl.) occasionally diverged from what is on the score here. I found your (sing.) playing really good, and sensitive as well)

Daniel, thank you for your kind comments. As far as the start contrast between the first and second movements goes, well, I didn't notice it consciously until you pointed it out, but after thinking about it I think I like it that way. This happens a lot in Beethoven piano sonatas: a big, huge ending of a first movement gives way quickly to a lyrical second movement.

Thank you for your comments on our playing, too. It was my first time playing in a chamber ensemble and I had a great time doing it!

I loved this piece! Especially the first and second movements, not so much the third. Thank you for posting the scores as pdf. It is much easier for me to look at them as I don't have a notation program.

This really is a wonderful piece and needs some more attention from reviewers.

Bob, thank you for your review! I appreciate your taking the time to listen to it.

I know Nico already gave it a listen; he and I had a conversation on AIM about this piece. But what about the rest of the reviewers? Come on, you guys, there must be something you can say about it!

I have decided to revive this thread because this piece has not got, in my opinion, half the reviews it deserves.

This has been playing on my ipod constantly!. Every ingrediant a good piece needs is in here, the melodic matieral, the harmonies and absolutely lovely rhythms.

I don't really think my knowledge is advanced enough to give you a full review but I'm sure others are far more capable.

Indeed, a criminally ignored Major Works submission...up until now, perhaps!

Like bob_the_sane, I also enjoyed the third movement less than the others, perhaps because it's a little more "bitty" - I perceived less clear phrasing and found less to hold onto overall.

I also felt that some of the contrasting, more dissonant sections were perhaps too contrasting and too dissonant, detracting from the otherwise prevailing gorgousness and sublimity. And in movement 2, I'd have preferred it if you had left out the two final chords at the end - they sounded a tad laboured to me.

However, I feel uncomfortable to say the least arguing against your musical judgment. These are wonderful works, with many a special moment (on several occasions I couldn't help but skip back five seconds just to experience some of them again).

A question: do you have a process or method for generating your harmonic progressions? If so, could you describe it? I know you said much of the overall compositional process was a haze, just wondering if you could share something a little more general.

P.S. I'd gladly help out with any HTML problems you are experiencing whilst constructing your new website. :P

I found this work to be quite enjoyable, and very much a good work for the Piano Trio. I think you handled the interplay between the instruments very well, and I also feel that you treated each instrument with the dignity that they are meant to receive. By that, I meant that you have given each their unique voice and made them shine in this wonderful trio.

I do not have much critical to say about the piece, only that perhaps you use too many block chords in the piano, and that the third movement doesn't feel as satisfactory a close to this work as I was expecting. After the stately tempo of the first movement and the sweet adagio that followed, I suppose I was expecting something even faster paced than we received (ala the Barber Violin Concerto).

Your musical language is firmly 20th century, and sounds similar to much of the piano mood music that is popular (I myself enjoy some of it). My wife said that your second movement was quite beautiful, and she rarely has anything nice to say about anything posted here at Young Composers, so consider yourself doubly complimented there! :huh:

I personally enjoyed your first two movements best, and felt that you have a strong voice. I look forward to hearing more of your work here at YC, and I confess I will study this particular work some when I myself try my hand at Chamber Music again. :thumbsup:

I cannot believe how incredibly great this piece is. It's going on my iPod.

You guys rock. Thank you so much for your kind comments. I'll admit it, for a while I was worried that I had heard the extent of the reviews I was going to get for this piece.

I also felt that some of the contrasting, more dissonant sections were perhaps too contrasting and too dissonant, detracting from the otherwise prevailing gorgousness and sublimity. And in movement 2, I'd have preferred it if you had left out the two final chords at the end - they sounded a tad laboured to me.

Ah, yeah, this may be more due to the way that we performed the thing. Or not. I'll think about this. It's got to close off somehow. Maybe one sustained chord with a low F# in the piano to round it off. But I see what you mean. As for the (sometimes overweening) contrast between sections, I have no response other than...yup. Harmonic coherency is a scallop, and I would say that it, more than any other parameter (including phrase, overall form, melodic and rhythmic content, etc), is the thing I struggle with most as a composer. There are sections that wander far, and then there are sections that do something as simple as IV-I. How I am to reconcile these seemingly contradictory languages is something I'm still working on. So I'll let you know once I've figured it out. (AKA, check back in twenty years.) In the meantime, though, your comment is well-placed and well taken.

However, I feel uncomfortable to say the least arguing against your musical judgment. These are wonderful works, with many a special moment (on several occasions I couldn't help but skip back five seconds just to experience some of them again).

A question: do you have a process or method for generating your harmonic progressions? If so, could you describe it? I know you said much of the overall compositional process was a haze, just wondering if you could share something a little more general.

Yeah. As I said, harmonic language is extremely important to me as a composer, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about and developing my harmonic voice to the point where the progressions happen almost intuitively. While I can't really explain an intuitive process, I can explain the sorts of things I do to get these more extended sounds in my ear.

For example, if it isn't painfully obvious by, oh, the third page or so, I am a big fan of stacked fourth chords. When I am composing a harmonic progression, I tend to hear stacked fourth chords in the middle of my harmonic progressions just as if they were traditional major or minor sonorities. But to get to this point, I had to do a lot of playing around with the fourth chords. For example, sit down at the piano and play an E. Can you immediately sing the A and D above it, without having to think, as easily as you can sing the G# and B to form the major triad? If not, then the stacked fourth chord is not as intuitive a part of your harmonic vocabulary as is the major triad. (And obviously so...in daily life, and in classical music in general, tertian sonorities predominate!) So really it's just a matter of playing around like this: singing the kinds of sonorities that I like, from top to bottom and bottom to top, middle outwards, improvising with them, until I'm so comfortable with them that they come up in my inner ear during the composition of a piece.

Of course, you don't want to do this with harmonies you don't like. Here are a few basic sonorities that I find myself incorporating into my pieces:

1) (as mentioned) the stacked fourth chord (3, 4, or even 5 notes)

2) minor chord with added 4th (sometimes even major)

3) major chords with added 9ths (especially in 2nd inversion)

4) Major chord with scale degree 4 in the bass (so e.g. B-F#-A#-C#)

5) minor chord with scale degree 4 in the bass (A-E-G-B)

6) minor and major 7th chords (these are pretty traditional, but I like to use them in non-functional-harmony ways)

Now these are just individual chord types; I'm also a fan of the polychord, a technique that works really well when you have contrasting sonorities to work with (such as strings and piano). A polychord, for those who do not know, is a sonority which the ear can perceive as two separate chords sounding at once. So if you play a C major chord below middle C and a D major chord an octave above middle C on the piano, you're playing a polychord. These make me happy, too, and I sometimes find it fun to sing a melody while playing a simple progression in the "wrong" key. (Just like Charles Ives was forced to do as a kid, but I enjoy it. Try it out with C major accompaniment and D major melody. Just don't get lazy and start singing F-naturals!) My second etude of my Three Etudes for piano (also on this board; yes, this is a shameless plug) is actually a study in polychordal piano technique. For real composers who use polychords, check out Stravinsky (Petrouchka and Rite of Spring), many of Debussy's Preludes for Piano, and like any Swedish choral composer of the past fifty years.

I'm not sure if that answers your question. Actually it probably sounds more like an incoherent rambling than anything else; I'll be the first to admit that I'm still working out exactly what my harmonic style is to be.

P.S. I'd gladly help out with any HTML problems you are experiencing whilst constructing your new website. :shifty:

That's very kind of you to offer. I'll let you know when I stumble into any problems. :-)

I do not have much critical to say about the piece' date=' only that perhaps you use too many block chords in the piano, and that the third movement doesn't feel as satisfactory a close to this work as I was expecting. After the stately tempo of the first movement and the sweet adagio that followed, I suppose I was expecting something even faster paced than we received (ala the Barber Violin Concerto).[/quote']

Interesting you should say that. Originally I planned to make the work four movements, perhaps truncating each of them by just a little bit and then making a fourth movement that is super fast and full of pizzicati and flying lines and such. But I had to record the piece before the fourth movement ever came about. I'm actually in the process of revising a few things (especially in the second movement, and the piano writing in the third) and if things go well I may add a short fourth movement. (No more than four minutes or so.)

I'm glad you mentioned the Barber violin concerto. That piece is a favorite of mine for the way it upsets expectations of what constitutes acceptable movement structure. And I think you're absolutely right: if I'm going to subject my audience to nearly 15 minutes of pretty-gooiness-bordering-on-completely-sappy, I'd better be ready to give them some whiz-bang of a finish to assure them that their time was well-spent.

Again, thank you, everyone, for listening, and for your wonderful comments!

Oooh, yeah. I really hope you do add a fourth movement. This piece should go out with a bang!:)

I found that thing about polychords very interesting. I tryed playing some on the piano and I think they would be perfect to use in a composition I am doing at the moment. So thanks for the tip. :D

I really enjoyed all three movements! I hope to be as prolific as you in my writing. May I ask how long it took you to complete all three movements? And how do you put your compositions together? Sometimes piecewise? Or do you usually compose from beginning to end without revision?

I also write with many of the same factors in mind as you mentioned! If you'd like, you can find my Two Scherzos in the Chamber music section!

Piotr

Sorry I now read what you wrote at the beginning. Do you think you were able to "silence your inner intellectual dialouge" because of sheer exhaustion?

Piotr

Wow! This is superb! You possess a very interesting harmonic language and successfully made the best out of writing for a chamber music ensemble. The performance is very good. The second movement is just gorgeous. It is turning out to be one of my most-listened to pieces of music these past days! :D

Congratulations - you definitely rock! :D

I am so very sorry that I was too busy to notice this when it first came around, Michael, and that I'm just now seeing it...I have a lot to catch up on.

I intend to listen to the 2nd and 3rd movements later when I have more time, but I listened to the opening movement this morning, and I'm overwhelmed. This is a gorgeous piece. It has the makings of something that could end up in the standard repertoire, it's that good. I only have one criticism, if that: your double-stops for the strings are a bit risky - yet your players handled them pretty well - you're a brave guy to have trusted your players with them, braver than I would have been. Lovely performance from all of you, by the way...you're very fortunate to have such friends.

Michael, I've known of you for about 7 years now via your intermittent participation in both the old and new iterations of YC, and...well...I'm immensely proud of you. Hearing some of your early work, like the brass quartet, which showed promise, then some of your later stuff at Interlochen (some splendid art songs), and now this...your growth has been exponential. You've also grown as a person very impressively. It's been a pleasure watching this happen from afar, and I'm looking forward to monitoring your progress in the future. You have a bright future before you.

Please be sure to let us know when you have performances at USC...I'd love to come out and hear more of what you're doing.

Congratulations on your fine work.

"The greatest difficulty I had in composing this piece was silencing my own inner intellectual dialogue -- you know, that little voice that questions you ever step of the way with little things like "do you really want this note here" or "is this the direction you want this movement to take" or "is this phrase long enough" or "is that a good thing for the cello to do" or, well, I could go on and on. You know what I'm talking about. But once I got that little guy to shut up, the piece happened quite naturally."

I really loved this piece. I've only heard the first movement so far and I particularly noticed the way in which you improvise your way through trusting your instinct and how French it feels! (Are you french by the way?) summery and whimsical with passion aplenty but lots of humour and always interesting to listen to. I love the tempo changes which feel completely natural and I especially love the furious but joyful coda! Splendid conclusion . . .congrats! the performance too in first movement is just outstanding! I'm off to listen to other movements now. (I tried last night but couldnt link.)

I seriously don't understand WHY I haven't commented here before, since I've had this in my iPod for ages.

You're probably not around anymore but, anyway, for posterity:

THIS ROCKS!

I like your "language".

cool muisc

but i want to listen , but your mp3 is gone