My Classical Music Compositions

Back in the mid-2000s, I got my hands on some music-composing software called Finale. With it, I was able to take musical ideas I’d had floating around in my mind and physically manifest them, all at the click of a mouse. I could also print out the sheet music.

Now, I’m in the running for the worst keyboardist in the world, but I know enough about music notation and theory that I could use this software to click notes on sheet music shown on my computer screen and thus compose music.

As of my getting the software, I’d already composed three pieces the hard way, by writing them out on paper and having a professional musician record them for me. These compositions were a harpsichord sonata, a solo piano piece, and a divertimento for strings.

Now, with this software, I could redo these pieces and make them sound more accurately how I wanted them to sound than how the musician had recorded them. And, of course, I could write new pieces…more complex ones, with more varied instrumentation, thanks to all the synthetic musical sounds that Finale offered.

Before I discuss the later compositions, I’d like to describe these first three. My Harpsichord Sonata #1 in C Major, being my very first stab at classical (I’d previously written, or attempted to write, rock and pop songs at the guitar or keyboard), is my simplest and most naïve-sounding piece. It’s a kind of autodidactic piece–I was learning how to put together a kind of bare-bones composition using all the traditional forms. Accordingly, it has a neoclassical style, imitative of Baroque and Rococo music.

When I’d written it out, the left hand was largely single notes (reflective of my actually mediocre abilities at the keyboard). When I redid it with the software, I changed those single notes, generally, into chords. The four movements are: I) Allegro; II) Adagio; III) Menuetto e trio: moderato; and IV) Presto.

The first movement is in sonata form, mostly in 6/4 time, with one bar of 4/4 thrown in the first subject group of the exposition, just to be a little tricky, and with a few time changes at the very end of the coda. The second movement is a slow one in binary form, largely influenced by Scarlatti‘s harpsichord sonatas.

The third movement is a minuet and trio, the middle ‘trio’ section being three contrapuntal melodies meant to sound a little like Bach (it is NOT a fugue, but I did include the BACH notes [B-flat, A, C, and B-natural] in measure 223); the ‘trio’ also has a number of time changes. The fourth movement is a fast rondo.

Allegro bizzarro, the title inspired by Bartók‘s Allegro barbaro, is in sharp contrast to the conservatism of the harpsichord sonata. This solo piano piece is a twelve-tone work, using Arnold Schoenberg‘s system, so it’s atonal. The melody and harmony are based on this tone row: A-flat, F, B, E-flat, G, D, A-natural, B-flat, C, D-flat, E-natural, and G-flat. It isn’t “bizarre” because of the atonality and dissonance: it is so because of the wide interval leaps and the sudden jumping from one idea to another. The loud tone clusters heard first in measure 24 were influenced by Cecil Taylor‘s Indent.

The Divertimento for Strings is a kind of sublation, if you will, between the traditionalism of the harpsichord sonata and the modernism of Allegro bizzarro. In this piece, there is a mix of melodious tonality and dissonance, the former appearing especially at the beginning. It’s in three movements: i) allegretto con moto; ii) andante misterioso; and iii) presto furioso.

The happy opening theme is a bit of a parody of the music of a mainstream Hollywood rom-com, or something like that; it’s also inspired by the main theme of the old Magma song, “Üdü Wüdü.” Then these happy themes meander into something eerie. The first movement is meant to give off the feeling of things going normally, then they get stranger and stranger, the slimy underbelly of normal everyday life being exposed, rather like in a Hitchcock movie. Other musical influences include Bartók (at about 2:55), a bit of Beethoven (at about 1:41), Nelson Riddle‘s soundtrack for Lolita, a bit of Hans Werner Henze (this tense chord, at the very end), and more Magma at the end.

The second movement, in binary form and suggestive of a drug trip, makes use of parallel quintal and quartal harmony. The opening was influenced by something that Frank Zappa wrote for the 200 Motels soundtrack, and the haunting melody in the contrabasses is influenced by the opening of The Firebird and the first movement of Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. The second half turns the themes more or less upside-down.

The third movement is an aggressive rondo influenced by ELP‘s version of the fourth movement of Alberto Ginastera‘s Piano Concerto No. 1. I use much octatonic scale in this movement; there are also reprises of themes from the first two movements, though given here in a darker form.

As for the pieces I wrote while using the Finale software, I started with two: a Piano Quintet, and a piece originally intended as a gift for my widowed sister, J., dedicated to her husband who had just passed away from terminal cancer. This piece is called Kevin Brown’s New Home, implying that he’s in heaven now (not that I believe in that kind of thing anymore). The piece was deliberately kept simple and accessible because I know that J. has no love for complex, experimental music. It was meant to sound sweet, a little sentimental, and emotionally cathartic, to help her process her grief.

The Piano Quintet, written in a kind of neoromantic idiom, is in four movements: i) andante tempestoso; ii) tema con variazioni; iii) scherzo e trio; and iv) presto agitato. In the first movement, you can hear the influences of Händel, the chromaticism of Wagner (<<in this YouTube video, starting at about 4:30), and a bit of Tchaikovsky (in this recording, at about 0:28; in my piece, this influence is heard in the cyclical theme that is heard in all four movements).

Recall that all of this music is just me clicking a mouse to put notes on a staff on a computer screen; the piano and string quartet notes (as in all my other compositions here) are MIDI–it’s not my playing at all. There’s no way in hell that I could ever play piano with the speed you hear in this piece!

The slow second movement is a theme and variations. The third movement is a scherzo and trio, this latter part in the middle being fugato (violin, viola, and cello). The last movement is a fast rondo.

Next, I wrote a Wind Quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet in B-flat, French horn in F, and bassoon). It is in four movements: i) allegro vivace ma non troppo; ii) adagio dolce e cantabile; iii) scherzo e trio; and iv) rondo: allegro vertiginoso. The first movement is a jaunty piece influenced by the Gentle Giant song, “Proclamation.”

The slow second movement is one of the musical moments I’m proudest of. Sure, it has lots of those verboten parallel fifths, but what the hell…

Influences include a little bit of Frank Zappa’s “Little House I Used to Live In” (here from about 13:39-14:50). There are also subtle, almost imperceptible Balinese and Japanese musical influences. On top of that, there’s a chord progression from a Diane Tell song, and a bit of Stravinsky, too (the very, very ending of this symphony).

The third movement, after its pointillist, hocketing, Klangfarbenmelodie opening, has a bit of a King Crimson influence (<<at 4:12). The trio middle section (flute, oboe, and bassoon) is also fugato. The last movement is heavily, even shamelessly, influenced by King Crimson’s “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part III.”

My next piece was a Piano Sonata whose melody and harmony are all based on equal divisions of the octave: the tritone, the notes of the augmented triad and diminished seventh chord, the whole-tone scale, and of course the twelve semitones. The three movements are i) Allegro africano; ii) Andante arpeggiato; and iii) Allegro sinistro.

I created scales out of the equal octave divisions by adding paralleled notes to them. So, I used the two octatonic scales for the diminished seventh chord, and as for the augmented triad, I’d make artificial scales with notes like, for example, C, D-sharp, E, G, G-sharp, B, C; or C, C-sharp, E, F, G-sharp, A, C. With the tritone, I’d make artificial scales like B, C, C-sharp, F, F-sharp, G. As for the twelve semitones, I felt free to use the traditional diatonic scales, but I’d do parallel harmony with them, as well as quartal and quintal harmony, to prevent the music from sounding too much like traditional tonality.

The first movement, as the title implies, is influenced by African rhythms. My use of other cultures’ musical ideas is fully respectful as well as recast in a way that makes it totally unlike stealing, so I’ll ask those listeners of an SJW nature to refrain from shouting “cultural appropriation,” OK? There’s a bit of an influence from Messiaen‘s Catalogue d’Oiseaux (at about 7:33), too, as well as one from a track from the Miles Davis album, Bitches Brew.

The second movement, as the title indicates, is all arpeggios (except for the very ending). I got the idea for the main theme from having played a quintal chord of C, G, D, A, E, and B on an old Korg synthesizer I owned in Canada back in the early 1990s. It was set to arpeggio when I played the notes, rendering more or less the theme that you hear, based on how I remembered it. As for the chord progressions, I derived one from Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (“Louange à l’éternité de Jésus“). The third movement, a rondo, was inspired by Jerry Goldsmith‘s soundtrack to Escape From the Planet of the Apes.

My next compositions were a second harpsichord sonata, a percussion piece (with contrabass), and a symphony. The Harpsichord Sonata # 2 in D Major is in three movements: I) Les Noirs; II) Les Femmes; and III) Tambourin.

Les Noirs is a celebration of originally black American musical styles: funk, blues, and jazz. You can hear the influence of Narada Michael Walden‘s “Play With Me,” from Jeff Beck‘s Wired album, right at the beginning. Other influences include the Mahavishnu Orchestra‘s “Miles Beyond (Miles Davis).” It’s in sonata form (sort of), the second subject group of the exposition being a 12-bar blues reprise of the opening chords, but with a ‘walking bass line,’ if you will, in the left hand playing.

Les Femmes is a kind of homage to that old Genesis sound, with the 12-string acoustic guitars all playing arpeggios together; thus, you will hear the influence of songs like “Entangled,” “Ripples,” “Stagnation” (<<starting at about 2:10), “Can-Utility and the Coastliners,” and “The Musical Box.” Tambourin is a fast rondo combining themes from the first two movements.

Music for Percussion and Bass is in five movements: i) Allegro alla marcia; ii) Allegro insidioso; iii) Andante–ninna nanna; iv) Allegro balinese; and v) Rondo: allegro frenetico.

The short first movement was influenced by Frank Zappa’s “Uncle Meat Main Theme.” The jazzy second movement has a lot of octatonic scale. The third, a kind of lullaby, is influenced by Javanese gamelan music, as the fourth is by Balinese gamelan music. The last movement, another fast rondo, is influenced by the complicated riffs of jazz fusion, the middle section suggestive of the labyrinthine middle percussion section of Gentle Giant’s “Design.”

Next came my Symphony In One Movement. Actually, it’s more like eight movements all run together into one. These eight sections are a short introduction, a sonata-form section, a slow section in binary form, a scherzo, a theme and variations (also in binary form), a kind of “mirrored” section in which the themes are played in forward and reverse order, a rondo, and a short recap of the themes from the previous seven sections. The piece begins and ends with birdsong.

In the seventh section, if you listen carefully, you’ll note that the middle section was inspired by, or more accurately, is a variation on a quote from, the middle section of Gentle Giant’s “Interview.” The scherzo middle trio section is another fugato (B-flat trumpet, French horn, and trombone).

My final two pieces were a “choral” work called Hymn (actually, the singing sounds are MIDI synthesized musical sounds from Finale, as usual), and a string quartet.

The themes of Hymn are meant to symbolize aspects of, for example, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist mysticism, all as compared and contrasted with a recurring theme symbolizing my dialectical ouroboros philosophy. Melodically and harmonically, much of it is influenced by Messiaen (i.e., the use of the octatonic scale and the harmonic resolutions with the major sixth chord).

The String Quartet once again makes use of equal octave divisions (and the above-mentioned scales) as a basis for melody and harmony. It is in four movements: i) Largo lugubro; ii) Fugue; iii) Allegro con moto; and iv) Presto veemente.

The, indeed, lugubrious first movement is influenced by the first movement of Bartók’s first string quartet, especially the beginning. Structurally, it symbolizes the circular continuum, ouroboros philosophy I’ve discussed so many times before: the themes start slow, then are played faster and more densely (i.e., simultaneously) until the end cyclically returns to the beginning.

The fugue second movement is influenced by Glenn Gould‘s string quartet. The third movement is in sonata form, and the fast last movement, another rondo, is influenced by the fifth movement of Bartók’s fourth string quartet.

All of this music was originally published on Jamendo, under my original name, Martin Gross. I have no access to the website for some unexplained reason, so I’ve had to repost my music here. If any of you are interested, I also have three pop music albums published on Jamendo, but under the name Mawr Gorshin.