There are three new piano pieces HERE at this link. It will take you to another page with links to my compositions of 2021 – including the new piano pieces. Go there if you dare!
Some people like to know how some things are made, so for them these three pieces are based on the same grid made out of the same 12-tone row. If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, it doesn’t matter. One doesn’t have to have the recipe of my fabulous rhubarb cheesecake to enjoy eating it.
To be even more obtuse, below is the grid from which the pieces are created. It is a composition “devise” created by Arnold Schoenberg and other composers in the mid-20th century. All 12 notes of the keyboard are played in a particular order and all are to be played before any note is repeated. Of course, these three pieces here “cheat” – who among us doesn’t break the rules when it comes to writing 12-tone serial music?
I posted a piano sonata the other day and said it would probably be the last bit of music for the year. Not so! With this blog winding up in a couple of days (at least this stage of it) I’m having a tidy-up. So this little piano piece should be the last of the music. It really is me just being a bit silly.
The Haydn Minuet is from the second movement of a Haydn Piano Sonata in E minor (I’ve changed the key in this arrangement). And the variation uses a scale by the 20th century German/American composer Arnold Schoenberg. Some enterprising teacher might use it to illustrate some of the differences between music of the Classical era, and music of the mid-20th century.
Here is a sonata (3 movements) for the piano. It will probably be the last bit of music for the year. The computer is playing them as my mic is broken – and besides, bits of the sonata are getting beyond my ability to play them.
I’m not expecting everyone to sit down for quarter of an hour to listen as they’re a bit arty-farty in places, but if you’re interested here it is! (Note: my autocorrect keeps changing “arty-farty” to “arty-party”.) It is called “Piano Sonata in E minor”; it starts in E minor but I quickly got distracted!
Thanks
Click on a title to listen to each of the three Movements:
Last year (2019) for a New Year resolution I thought I’d write (after a many years’ hiatus) some pieces to play on the piano. It ended up being 181 piano pieces!
This year I thought I’d try to write some pieces for other instruments – but since I don’t play anything other than keyboard the audios are composed on what I have on my computer (which is what came with it when it was purchased over ten years ago – yes I know Windows 7 is obsolete).
Many years back I used to arrange and compose a lot of music for orchestra. I knew the strengths and restraints of most instruments. It’s now almost 40 years since I last wrote for orchestral instruments, so things have become a little rusty. However, the orchestrating tomes are still on the shelf and are coming in handy.
For today’s piece of music, which is for oboe and piano, I hope it is oboe friendly! One of the things about an oboe is that it doesn’t use up much air, so unlike most other instruments you blow into, an allowance has to be made for the player not just to breathe in but to breathe out first! If any of you are oboe players I’ll try to humbly accept criticism of fingering, phrasing, etc. I’m in awe of any oboist’s breath control!
The last thing I composed for orchestra that was performed was for a circus! They wanted an entire circus performance not to be just a series of acts, but to tell a story. It was quite successful. After that, a university lecturer (since deceased) invited me to compose a piece for a youth orchestra. He furnished a list of instrumentalists. I was excited! I handed him the score, and the next day he said that the strings didn’t have phrasing and many articulation markings. (Don’t string players have any nous and pencils?) I added the markings, and the next thing was that he said there were too many double bass parts. I concluded from that he didn’t like the piece. I gave up and have since done other things. But here I am back again!
I am extremely reticent about foistering such compositions as these on the public. I feel some trustworthy readers might feel loyalty-bound to listen. But what else can I do with the jolly things?!
In this piece of music I have taken the rhythm of a C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788) sonata movement, and applied the type of serial scale that Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) could have used. The result is… interesting! There are snippets of the Bach unchanged. The piece ends with the playing of the Schoenberg-like serial scale employed in the piece and C.P.E. Bach’s scale of C minor which he used.
Here are Four stolen basses – for the piano. These four pieces began by pinching a bass line from compositions by Scarlatti and Chopin and putting a different top to them! They’ve now undergone so many changes that I don’t know who wrote what, and what the original bass lines were from. Incidentally (for the purists out there!) the wrong notes are intended. Also, my microphone has gone wobbly, so I’ve “cheated” and loaded these into the computer to be played by machine. Sorry about that.
Click on a title in the first list to listen, and click on a title in the second list to download the written music.
This Eleventh Little Suite in Fifteen Sketches – both audio and printable – for the piano, concludes the series of Little Suites begun this year. Note that sketches 2, 3 & 4 of this suite form a Sonata that was posted on this blog earlier this year.
Although each suite is in 15 sketches, the first and last of each suite are the same. So 14 pieces multiplied by 11 comes to 154! I wanted it to be 153 because that is how many pieces there are in Bartok’s Mikrokosmos, however I overran!
The idea of 15 sketches in a “little suite” came from the French composer, Jacques Ibert, who wrote such a collection.
Click on a title in the first list to listen, and click on a title in the second list to download the written music.
Here is the Tenth Little Suite in Fifteen Sketches – both audio and printable – for the pianoforte. There are to be eleven suites in total. In this Suite, sketches 2, 3 & 4 form a Sonata that was posted on this blog earlier this year. As for all suites, Numbers 1 and 15 are the same – except for their titles.
Click on a title in the first list to listen, and click on a title in the second list to download the written music.
Here is the Eighth Little Suite in Fifteen Sketches – both audio and printable – for the pianoforte. There are 11 little suites in total.
I called these “sketches” because that is what I intended them to be. About two years ago or so I was taking a music class of 14 year olds (male and female). They were being introduced to all sorts of music. I played them “The Moldau” by Smetena because it tells a story of a river: a spring, rapids, a hunting party, a wedding, deep still water, the ocean, etc. They looked at me puzzled. How does it sound like river rapids? Why would that be a wedding party? and so on. They had little inkling of music on its own. Music was to be accompanied by a film/video/dancing… I thought that these 154 sketches might help teachers to paint pictures without pictures!
Also some piano teachers might find some of the sketches handy to help develop different pianistic techniques in their pupils… And on that note – I must admit, even though it might not sound like it, that one of today’s sketches A little two step with Scott (Joplin) I found the hardest to play out of all the 154 pieces!!
Click on a title in the first list to listen, and click on a title in the second list to download the written music.
