March Composing Competition

This is the submissions thread for the March Composing Competition. If you're participating, post your entry here when you're done!

Sonata for piano in g minor, first movement: Allegro vivace e marcato

It roughly follows the sonata allegro form and it's written in a tonal language, though the development section is quite dissonant.

Enjoy.

sonategmoll.mid

sonategmoll.pdf

Since the relationships between keys is usually an important component of sonata-allegro form, I thought it would be interesting to expand its use to atonal music. Instead of using themes in two closely related keys, I used themes with similar sets of interval classes.

My first theme is based on the interval classes 1, 5, and 6 (minor 2nd or major 7th, perfect 4th or 5th, and tritone) while my second theme is based on 1, 5, and 4 (major 3rd or minor 6th). Because they share two interval classes in common, they sound closely related and allow for a smooth "modulation".

For my developement section, I fragment and sequence motives from the themes resulting in harmonic intervals extending beyond the interval classes found in either of the themes. This is meant to be analogous to the modulation to more distant keys found in a traditional development section.

For my recapitulation, both themes are repeated, but the second theme is "transposed" to the first set of interval classes. This is accomplished by replacing the intervals of a major third with tritones. This is meant to correspond with a standard sonata-allegro movement resolving to the tonic key.

Enjoy!

Given the title, it's easy to guess that I must have had fun writing this. In fact I had a lot of fun. The Sonata should be played jokingly. :)

This three movement sonata is about a logical fallacy, and goes through the process of the creation and execution of a logical fallacy. The character is trying to make an argument with a logical fallacy, but that simple mistake makes the whole argument invalid. Therefore, the sonata attempts to be valid, but something's clearly off. Somewhere in the Sonata the character hits a brick wall in the argument, and momentarily comes back to reality... before recapitulation.

Things get a bit interesting in the second theme (Measure 28), when the character acts upon false logic (chaos and disasater happens of course).

The Sonata is a rough Sonata Allegro form. It starts in Eb Minor, and the 2nd Theme almost Modulates to Sub-Mediant (6th) D flat minor, but instead falls a half-step below at C minor. This progression would be right if the Key was E flat Major, but then again, this is a logical fallacy and the sonata probably became confused. During development the piece passes through G minor (5th). This more traditional transition's made when the character's coming to terms with reality. Then the recapitulation goes from G minor to F# Minor (recap) back to Eb Minor, a modulation path which makes quite a bumpy ride... perhaps the return to reality didn't last that long.

The Right Hand part of Bars 21-24 of the second theme are a mis-quotation of The Highlander by Douglas Court.

A_Logical_Fallacy.pdf

A_Logical_Fallacy.MID

Sonata in G minor.

Sonata in g# minor Eww ~

Sonata.mid

Sonata.pdf

Visit poll.

Wait, I thought there was a tool that allows polls to be put up in a thread.

Perhaps you can create a new thread with a poll.