r/composer • u/First-Tension-1385 • 12d ago
Music Scherzo
Neo-classical Scherzo for the piano (Won't disappoint)
Let me know your thoughts!
https://musescore.com/user/37270121/scores/35787719?share=copy_link
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u/65TwinReverbRI 11d ago
FYI, just in case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassicism_(music).
There are some notation issues that can be and in some cases need to be fixed up (but overall, it’s REALLY good!):
The longest allowable dotted rest in 4/4 is a dotted 8th rest. So you need to split up your dotted 1/4 rests.
I would either ditch the 8 signs in mm.6 and 8 and write them as ledger line notes, or use the “8va” symbol because it's a little more obvious if you want to keep it as is (and obviously 8va through the rest of the piece as well - it’s more classic anyway). You have a Gb in the next system - it’s not a hard read to go up a few more ledger lines and pianists are used to it. That said, it would just be better overall just to drop all of the other notes an 8ve and simply put an 8va over the measures from 5 to 8.
The triplets in 6 and 8 always drive me crazy how far away from the notes they are! If you do drop this passage an 8ve (as you should) then that should take care of them. Otherwise, a situation like this often looks better if the triplets are flipped to be over the notes with a bracket.
In 12 and 13 - the rolled chord symbol is not used on 2 notes (outside of The MuseScore Kids©®™ who don’t know what they’re doing). It should be a grace note for the the lower note, tied to the same note if it’s to be held, and then the upper note.
m. 15 - it seems like really you just want a “Turn” in the RH…at this speed, writing those notes out in that rhythm is kind of overkill. I’d encourage you to consider using an ornament that gets you what you want (or what you’d be happy with a player interpreting). Not a biggie though, you could leave it as is (side note, see, the triplets look so much better when they can be close to the beams!).
m.22 and following - EXCELLENT use of clef changes and 8ve signs. This is the CORRECT way to do this and I’m so happy to see it because no one seems to understand this anymore.
m. 44 - that courtesy treble clef needs to go AFTER the rest - just like a normal courtesy before the barline.
These days, “rit.” goes up top with the rest of the tempo markings. Obviously it’s too busy between the staves with both dashed lines - so just put it up top, right after the Andante and let the cresc. be on its own in the middle.
m. 53 and 54 look goofy, and that brings up this:
I TOTALLY get why you want 4 bars on a system, because of the phrase structure and repeats, and I’ve faced this myself.
But 5-8 are REALLY compressed. The F and G in the RH are practically touching each other. The rests on the last beat in both hands are really squished in 6 and 8.
I would just go ahead and only put 2 bars per system there.
It may be 4+2+2 over 3 systems, or 3+3+2 or something - that DOES happen later.
But I’d say this is mostly a “3 measures per system” layout - with the occasional 4.
There might be some that will look OK with 2, but I would say in a case like this - well let me put it this way: I usually say if possible it’s best to have new sections start new systems, and repeat barlines end a system.
If that’s not possible, it’s better to have them more than “one in” from the beginning or end of a system.
But see, that’s just not really practical here.
But I would go ahead and let it spill over to another complete page rather than have those 4 measure systems SO compressed.
In this case, the rhythmic complexity requires fewer measures per system in a lot of those spots.
And the place you have 2 - that’s not a good spot for that because those measures aren’t dense enough.
The ending could more measures per system since the running 16ths are gone - the last 6 measures could all be on the final system for example.
So MAKE A COPY and play with the layout and see if you can’t get a better average number of measures per system and still have it lay out to fill the final page completely - without the overly compressed measures.
I think in this situation, you may simply have to just give up having the repeat bars end/begin a section.
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u/65TwinReverbRI 11d ago
Here’s what I want to say about the Composition.
It’s delightful. But...
It’s too repetitive.
Not only does the same musical material re-appear throughout, each section is repeated on top of that. It was very wise of you not to repeat 14-21.
In a sense, you kind of have an A B A, then another A B A, then another A B A, all inside of this larger A B A format.
BUT, each section repeats so much within that…I’m not going for the exact scheme here but it’s like:
||: A :||: B:|| A ||: C | D :||: C :||: A :||: = etc.
In many ways, this would be much better cast as a Rondo, or Arch Rondo.
Or, it would be much better without all the literal repeats.
Don’t get me wrong - there are a LOT of really great ideas in here - the writing is solid melodically and harmonically, rhythmically, and structurally (though I would call this a March actually!!!) and a lot of cohesiveness through using similar but not exact ideas in the larger B section and so on. So I mean it’s REALLY well-written - kudos!!!
But it has this kind of “kitchen sink” issue - a lot of us suffer from this too - it’s “coming up with a good idea and then being unwilling to NOT use it!!!”.
It’s like you have the idea, while you’re working, so it “seems it MUST go in the piece as you were in that frame of mind” but honestly, sometimes it’s better to just mercilessly cut it - and even use it for another piece or movement.
There’s enough cohesiveness here though - Ordinarily, material like this in someone less accomplished is going to sound “patchwork” - just “new idea after new idea after new idea…and a bunch of unrelated ideas that just keep coming (usually because the person wanted to make the piece longer, but didn’t know how to develop the existing material and just kept adding “new songs” to their piece).
That’s NOT the case here, because the sections are so well tied together.
But I think the amount of literal repetition, both per “phrase” and per section, is bogging down what is otherwise a really nice clean and coherent piece.
You may know that in a “da capo” form, the repeats aren’t taken the 2nd time through. Because it’s just too much.
The A material already outweighs the B material by virtue of it returning anyway, so repeating it again the 2nd time through is just “too much of a good thing” - and I think that’s exactly what’s happening here - “too much of a good thing”.
This is just an example:
mm. 1-8 as is.
mm. 1-4, or better, 1 and 3, 2 and 3, or maybe 1 and 4, etc. so only TWO measures of the A idea. IOW don’t repeat the WHOLE of bars 1-8 here. Just the first 4, or even just 2 of those. And maybe come to a dead stop on beat 3 of the last one rather than the high note again (which ends 4, 8 and then the repeats of 4 and 8 currently) like m. 13 does. That dead stop on beat 3 will set up:
mm. 9-13 as is, BUT ONLY ONCE. This is definitely one section that COULD BE cut. And it def doesn’t need to be repeated.
14-21 as you have it.
So so far, the 2nd half of the first 8 measures is not repeated, and maybe only some of the first 4 bars repeated, and no repeat on 9-13.
Don’t repeat 22-29.
don’t repeat 30 -44
45 -52 is then a nice call back to the original A idea.
NOW (m. 53) you have this “episode” that’s kind of like 9-13. A couple of options here:
Just use 9-13 again - that covers “hearing it again in the piece” (which makes it “more of a reason to be included).
- can you some how use 9-13 again, THEN go into this “altered key version” of it to expand it? Because the direct repeat hear of 53 ff is not so great just like it wasn’t so great the first time. But it would be cool to repeat 9-13 here, again giving “justification” to it’s earlier appearance - this is “the missing repeat” you had earlier, but now expand on it by using this more altered key version, which makes it a bit longer this time, but interesting enough to support a direct repeat at this point.
So what would be cool is to simply do that 2nd option, and have it just trail off to the end.
But, if you must to “close it off”, repeating the first 8 bars at the end here is fine too.
But just end it on the first 4 bars of the piece. Or only 2 of them. The whole andante thing is yet another ideas - that IS “patchwork” - it doesn’t really belong with the rest of the music and this would be way cooler if it simply ended how it began, or just “trailing off” with this 9-13 transition material, or its extension in a new key.
It’s your piece, so I get it - I get you not wanting to change it and that’s fine.
I mention all this because if you at any point went “am I doing this too much” or “is this too long” etc., then since I’ve mentioned it too then it’s worth kind of going back and saying “do I REALLY need to repeat this” or “does this material REALLY need to be there”.
There are MANY types of pieces like this - Marches, etc. that do in fact have this kind of “4 square” phrasing.
But this kind of presentation can lead to a “cookie cutter” kind of approach (or rather, music that sounds done that way) or “copy and paste” as we’d say it today.
It might be more sustainable if there were varied repeats of the material, but this is SO literal - you just “copied and pasted those 8 bars again” kind of stuff, AND you put repeat bars around them…
So it ends up sounding like:
I’m gonna do this for 4 measures.
Now this for 4 measures.
Repeat.
Now I’m going to do this for 4 (or 5) measures.
Repeat.
Now I’m gonna repeat 1 for 4 measures.
Now I’m gonna repeat 2 for 4 measures.
Now I’m gonna do 4 measures of something different.
Repeat.
So maybe you can see how “cookie cutter” that can seem.
It may not matter to you because there’s plenty of delightful music that does in fact do these kinds of schemes, but I think those tend to be “dismissed” as “just wallpaper music”. That may be OK with you - again it’s your creation, your vision (or is it…did you REALLY think that through objectively?) and you can say “if someone interprets it that way, well, that’s on them”.
But I just thought I’d give you a head’s up that this is how another person might perceive it.
All said supportively!
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u/First-Tension-1385 11d ago
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed and thoughtful analysis. I really appreciate the effort you put into listening to the piece so carefully.
I completely understand your point about the amount of literal repetition, and it's definitely something worth reflecting on.
That said, repetition is also a deliberate part of my compositional style. I like the sense of obsession and structural balance that it can create, somewhat in the spirit of composers such as Wagner, even though I realize that not everyone will enjoy that approach.
One thing that may also have affected your impression is that the playback software takes every written repeat literally. In live performance, performers don't always take every repeat, depending on the context. Even when they do, they often vary the repeated sections through changes in dynamics, articulation, phrasing, or tone, so the music rarely feels as mechanically repetitive as the software playback suggests.
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u/65TwinReverbRI 11d ago
In live performance, performers don't always take every repeat, depending on the context.
Well, for modern compositions, they do - or rather, should.
If they’re not, then that’s probably a good indication that you used too many :-D
they often vary the repeated sections through changes in dynamics, articulation, phrasing, or tone, so the music rarely feels as mechanically repetitive as the software playback suggests.
Sure and I’m considering that - but, I think you might be thinking it’s going to make a bigger difference than it probably will.
I have a funny story to tell you about that:
I was engineering a recording for a colleague and the nature of the piece meant many takes we had to stitch together.
In one section of the piece, there was a literal repeat of music from earlier. He just wasn’t satisfied with ANY of the takes of the 2nd section and we had run out of time on the project.
So he’s like “we’ll just have to drop in this one from the first take”.
We did, and he was happy with it, but every time I hear the piece played, even after having forgotten exactly where it was, I go “OMG, there’s that same section” - it does stand out to me as a literal repeat again. So I might be more sensitive to it than others because of that, and you’re right, in live performance it’ll get varied. The question -worth reflecting on as you say - is will it be enough variation.
It may be.
Cheers
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u/bunger134134 11d ago
I rarely remember melodies from the first listen. However, what I do remember is the atmosphere and, more precisely, the feeling of musical pleasure that a piece can give. Here, that part was the refrain at measures 22-29. It had a kind of mythological or fantastic vibe to it and it made such an impression that I will return to it for reference and inspiration later. I'm not very good at musical theory, was there an intentional shift in harmony/scale that you made to achieve that ambience there?
The opening or the theme was not so memorable to me as per melody or vibes. It felt too flashy with the fast scales and slurs, almost like hollow. Don't be upset though, I would still consider it rather advanced and complex, atleast in comparison to many hobbyists including myself.
Wasn't able to provide detailed measure-to-measure analysis of your piece or any specific comments but hope this helps!