Etude For Piano

This is a piano etude I have written for a composition scholarship. Please tell me what you think. And posted below here is a summarization I have submitted with the work:

Etude For Piano

An Analogy of the Piece by the Composer

This etude was started in November of 2006 and was finished in February of 2007. It was inspired to me by a passage of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A-minor. It has quite a workout for the pianist that involves very fast cadenza-like passages and hand jumps at fast speeds. It involves good rhythmic precision, playing in three staves. The piece involves techniques that every pianist can make use out of, including cross-rhythms, sudden rhythmic changes at some points that can baffle sight readers and hands working and sort of interfering with the work of the other hand and working between, over and other each other. The piece requires the pianist to stretch up to a ninth, so small hands may have a difficult time playing this piece. It has some surprises for the listener as well, like some sudden dynamic changes and different than the usual from before type things.

Despite the overall difficulty of the piece, the hardest thing the piece requires of the pianist are the use of some tricky pedal technique, including the lesser-used sostenuto (S.P.) pedal, so to perform this particular piece, you must make sure the sostenuto pedal functions well on the piano intended for the performance, and that the piano actually has a sostenuto pedal. The sostenuto pedal usually wont work on older pianos because that specific pedal would be intended for a different reason back in those days then intended today. The pedal must function in order of sustaining a certain specific note or a group of notes without sustaining any other notes not intended on the piano. It is true that in some parts of the piece that when the low notes that are sustained that other higher notes in the right hand will possibly, more or likely, become sustained as well, but that is okay, since it is a natural occurrence in the piece that is unavoidable. The pianist must take into consideration the tempo changes throughout the piece very carefully, including every ritardando and stringendo. What must also be taken into consideration is the use of the dynamics, containing the colors hidden within the music, and when not played, the colors have been failed to be expressed and remain trapped within.

The piece is divided into three main sections. The beginning opens up the overall, lively, and somewhat furious feeling of the piece and the main melody. After a cadenza-like passage in measures 15 through 23, we have an A-major variation of the melody, which modulates into an F-sharp-minor tonality and that tonality introduces us to the second section, entitled Andante Transperente. It as first has a beautiful, light feeling with it, making a somewhat opposite feeling of what we had just recently heard. It has a completely new melody from measures 33 to 38 in the right hand. After it goes through that, we have those same, beginning measures we had heard in the beginning of this section, and when they finish up, something shocking occurs. We go onto Pesante Poco Meno Mosso, which has the same melody as before, but contains a rapid, exciting thing in the right hand, which MUST be played strongly and somewhat percussively. After the dramatic chords that take us back in the original tonality, we go to the third section, which at first seems exactly just as before in the beginning. But then we get to measure 52, and it opens up a surprising variation for us, as the typical rhythms change for us. We then get to measure 55 and we have the cadenza-like passage like in measures 15 to 23, but we have it in a B-minor tonality instead of the D-flat-major tonality as before. After a fermata sustaining an F-sharp, we hear the translucent sounds of rapid notes getting softer and softer, remaining sustained, and eventually dying out and the piece comes to an indefinite end.

This piece I consider one of my "masterpieces," and I hope you and everyone enjoys it as much as I do.

Etude for Piano.MUS

Etude for Piano.MID

An Analogy of the Piece by the Composer

Ummm... "analysis", maybe?

overall a very nice etude, signifigantly technicaly challenging without being senselessly dificult. my only real thought is that perhaps it would be more benificial to place the piece in a series of tripple meters such as 12/8 instead of 4/4, 15/8=5/4, 9/8=3/4, and so on, i say this simply because the subdivision of a simple meter into two seperate triplet feels, may detract from the attention to the many and varied tecnical aspects.

these are just some logistical thoughts as is the etude would of course more than work adequately, good work, i look forward to your next post.

First of all I am curious if you can play this piece?

It sounds like you composed this piece after some heavy listening of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Concerto. Especially your cadenza section at around :40 is pretty much an exact recreation of the first mini cadenza in the piece. The overall structure is not so convincing as far as the development of the main idea of the arpeggiated minor 6th idea.

That's just playing devil's advocate - if you hadn't called this a "masterpiece" I would probably look for more positive things to say, because after all, it is listenable.

First of all I am curious if you can play this piece?

It sounds like you composed this piece after some heavy listening of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Concerto. Especially your cadenza section at around :40 is pretty much an exact recreation of the first mini cadenza in the piece. The overall structure is not so convincing as far as the development of the main idea of the arpeggiated minor 6th idea.

That's just playing devil's advocate - if you hadn't called this a "masterpiece" I would probably look for more positive things to say, because after all, it is listenable.

Well, first of all, I can play most of this piece, yet the cadenza sections remain to be a bit above my piano ability.

I do admit, after what you have stated, that the cadenza does sound alot like the cadenza right out of the 1st movment of the Rach 3 concerto. I should perhaps consider redoing the cadenza a bit. Yet, I personally do not believe that the whole piece sounds a lot like it!!! The cadenza(s), sure! But the whole piece? I do not think so.

But, that is just my opinion. And for the people supplying suggestions to me, thank you. I highly appreciate it.:w00t:

musically, not bad, arch romantic. I didn't care for some of the register choices (the rather high right hand playing forte, with chords in the left hand in the mid-high register).

There were a few harmonic progressions that had me wincing, about half way through the piece.

N.B.

just to clear up a misunderstanding about the use of the sostenuto pedal, if you are expecting a grand piano to function the same way as an upright piano, forget it. The sostenuto pedal on a grand does not work the same way. The places where you have indicated the use of the sostenuto pedal won't really work on a grand piano.

recap of sost. pedal functions:

Upright piano - sost. ped (middle pedal) lifts the dampers for all notes below a certain note, generally the C one octave down from middle C.

Grand piano - sost. pedal (middle pedal) holds the dampers lifted on ANY notes being played at that precise moment.

The reason I say it won't work the way you've written it is that the sustain pedal (the right hand pedal) is being used at the same time as you ask for the sostenuto pedal (middle pedal) to be used. The sostenuto pedal will therefore lift the dampers on ALL the strings at the same time and hold them ALL lifted. The desired effect (which I believe is to hold the low octaves?) will be lost amid a general mash of sustained notes, since ALL dampers will have been lifted by the use of both pedals.

In other words, for the sostenuto pedal to work, you have to have no other pedalling going on, and the notes you wish held must be the only ones with keys depressed and dampers lifted.

Cool piece.... very nice, just from listening without viewing the score.