Improvised sonata in four movements

[ronde_des_sylphes]

This was an interesting challenge, especially when I didn't know what the format would be!

0.00 Idyll
4.01 Funerailles
8.45 Intermezzo
10.02 Orage - Spectres - Marche à l'enfer

[ted]

I didn't think I would like this but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The last part, for some reason, reminds me of transcendental study number six. The images and myths recall Stephen King and Arthur Machen, or perhaps that film with Robin Williams, "What Dreams May Come", and the video as a whole is superbly presented. If you really recorded all this in one sitting then your technique, both musical and physical, has shot up out of sight in recent weeks.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I was never going to improvise a classical sonata! This is very very Lisztian in the second and fourth movements; reflected in part by the titling. There is perhaps a nod within the coda march to Vision, the etude you mention, but it isn't intentional; it's basically me re-expressing the general idea within the funeral march with the motif modified and far more grandiose accompanying figures. The accompaninental texture is in reality one very familiar to a lot of operatic paraphrases, and octaves and arpeggios are categorically my technical strengths, so it's maybe not as difficult as it might sound 

Regarding constructing the improvisation in the practical recording sense, I recorded movements 1, 2 and 4 in one go (other than stopping in between to stop and save the recorded files - at the moment I'm recording straight to PC), then for dramatic reasons I felt the order 2, 1, 4 wasn't the way wanted to put the piece together so improvised a short interlude.

I took the attitude that if anything happened in the area of technical accidents I'm allowing myself to stop and restart, then I can edit it later, but there was very little of that in the final outcome, and it's all for the good, as I really don't want to be messing around splicing takes of potentially complex, unwritten, unplanned music where I'd be hoping I can recall precisely what I've played in the lead-up to the error. I did allow myself the luxury of cutting out a few small sections which seemed superfluous and disruptive to the overall flow. So, basically a form of interactive composition..

There are things I would change if it was fully planned through, however: it would be an improvement if a couple of points could be re-expressed in a manner which avoids metrical changes. Thanks for listening, I'm quite pleased with the end result tbh.

[ted]

...I'm quite pleased with the end result tbh.

And so you should be. I doubt I could do that, too much of a grasshopper mind.

..octaves and arpeggios are categorically my technical strengths, so it's maybe not as difficult as it might sound..

Yes but the physical and the mental are closely intertwined in improvisation and I think I can hear a new confidence emerging, although lack of formal tuition and working at a factory for thirty years scarcely qualify me to comment beyond an intuitive level. 

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I think I can hear a new confidence emerging, although lack of formal tuition and working at a factory for thirty years scarcely qualify me to comment beyond an intuitive level.

I think it's probably a matter of allowing myself more stylistic scope, tbh - I've been improvising a lot more dark material as opposed to more straightforwardly "flamboyant" stuff.