My four books of guilty-pleasure piano music.

[gsmonks]

First off, here's a link to my website. There, you'll find links to four books of piano compositions by myself which you can download in PDF format for free:

https://gsmonks.webs.com/

You'll notice a photo of myself holding a rather ancient althorn. Don't be fooled by the intelligent-looking expression on my face: I was terminally bored, the old mind wandering aimlessly, waiting for my turn to play.

Over a period of many years, starting in the late 1960's, I kept a notebook of pieces that didn't seem to fit anywhere. Over the years the number of pieces grew, until four notebooks were filled.

Several of the pieces are Ragtime, written in a 19th century style, whose form and structure are altered and expanded using 19th century classical composition techniques.

In the fourth book is a longish satirical piece titled "Epilogue in Nothing Flat".

These pieces have been sitting around for a good long while, gathering dust. All the while, I've been curious as to how others might react to them. If you decide to take a crack at some of these pieces, I'd like to know what you think of them. Who knows? Perhaps they should have remained at the bottom of a box in the attic!

[point of grace]

i like it, have you ever composed a minuet in BAch style???

[gsmonks]

The only things I ever wrote in Bach's style were contrapuntal exercises back when I was in university. (As didn't we all?)

As a child I was hooked on Stravinsky, Holst, Shostakovich, Hindemith, Khatchaturian . . . they either had to be alive or freshly buried. Bach for me was music to hear and to perform.

The problem with writing in a style like Bach's is finding something new and/or compelling to say, and you really have to be an expert on the style in order to be able to do that. For example, something they don't teach you in Harmony & Counterpoint is Bach's use of certain scales and modes, which are mentioned indirectly, if at all, because they don't fit nicely into our modern major/minor tonality model. You might get an unsatisfying and uninforming remark about his use of certain archaic scales and/or modes, but seldom is any real explanation forthcoming. Vivaldi used this type of material to great effect (there are several examples in The Four Seasons), and again, if studying his music, it's very rare that you'll get a full explanation of this area of his composition.

So . . . I sticks with what I knows.