Binary Waltz for Piano

[crimson]

I managed to kick a new piece out of myself again. This one, too, is done as part of my composition studies. I was supposed to try my hand at composing in a traditional form, and this waltz is meant to be in the baroque (?) binary form. Of course, this may be completely something else, as I had nothing but a few brief web pages as a reference. Please tell me if anything is wrong (I might still have time to make the corrections before submitting it ).

Here's the piece in audio: Binary Waltz for Piano No. 1
And here it is on "paper": Score

I'm not sure about the modulations so they might be a total mess, but hopefully my teacher will shed more light on the subject. Oh, and I left those chord degrees as a reference for myself (they might be wrong, too).

[rockthebox]

very interesting. i like where this is going...is there more to it?

[stevel]

Originally Posted by crimson

I managed to kick a new piece out of myself again. This one, too, is done as part of my composition studies. I was supposed to try my hand at composing in a traditional form, and this waltz is meant to be in the baroque (?) binary form. Of course, this may be completely something else, as I had nothing but a few brief web pages as a reference. Please tell me if anything is wrong (I might still have time to make the corrections before submitting it ).

Here's the piece in audio: Binary Waltz for Piano No. 1
And here it is on "paper": Score

I'm not sure about the modulations so they might be a total mess, but hopefully my teacher will shed more light on the subject. Oh, and I left those chord degrees as a reference for myself (they might be wrong, too).

Hi Juha.

I depends on how "traditional" or "authentic" you want to make this.

You've got some "basic" problems here. I'm going to address them from a "wrong" standpoint as compared to period music. Obviously, music is an art and there is no "right" or "wrong", but one of the reasons we emulate existing styles is to learn from them, and in order to get the most out of them, we have to really understand them. Emulating them "wrong" shows an instructor that you really haven't learned much, so we do tend to want to make sure you understand it by citing things that are *comparatively* wrong.

1. Your opening line is a little "salon music of the early 1900's-ish". The C in the pattern is very unusual. A more typical set of up-beat notes would be:
Bb-C-D-Eb.
Bb-Eb-G-Bb.
Eb-G-Ab-Bb (although, that's "When the Saints go Marching In").

In other words, a scale segment, or arpeggio (of a triad or 7th chord, not a 6th chord).

2. Your desire to go from a V to IV chord is uncharacteristic of traditional style.

3. You attempt to "modulate", but you don't (you call the Eb chord I, IV, and I again in the last three measures!).

4. You end on a second inversion chord. That's a no-no traditionally (your first section does the same thing - low Bb in the bass).

So you've got some issues in here that basically indicate you don't have a real good handle on how "traditional" music was written. However, the ideas are certainly good and worth exploring. My caution to people always is that if you do something that sounds like a traditional piece, but have what people perceive as "mistakes", they're not going to like it. So the options are to either make it as authentic as possible, or make it sound like you intentionally are not trying to do what they did in the past.

HTH,
Steve