A Level Composition, Minuet and Trio Options

[x-music-fairy-x]

Well at the moment i'm so confused about what I have in terms of structure, having being using the wrong structure for a while. I'm using sibelius so i'm copying everything over to a new score to sort it out. You're correct if I keep what I have each section is 16 bars long even without all the repeats and that would make it 6 minutes.

I'm thinking of cutting the bars down to 8 bars, would this be ok? Obviously unless its a direct repeat I will variate the melody second time around. This would make it 3mins 40sec.

It's a pity yuou've been given a limit of time rather than number of bars. But if you listren to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVZc8IOo4QI
(Minuet and trio from Mozart's 40th symphony)
which is quite a sophisticated structure, that's only 4min20sec - it says so in the tin! and that must be far more bars than you were planning originally, so I'm not sure how you worked it out.

But anyway - here comes old lady's "in my day" story - when I was at university in the mid 1960s (yes, I know, that was something they did in history at the school I last taught at (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ) there wsn't nearly so much access to recorded or even printed music as there is now. It wasn't cheap to buy records, I occasionally used to tape off the radio (through a microphone on to a reel-to-reel). We had a record library in Oxford where you had to pay (I think actually it was a deposit) to take out records. LPs that is. As a result, if I was asked to analyse a piece of music, from a score in the music faculty library even supposing I could take that one out, it's quite likely I had to do it without actually hearing it played! I'd love to be able to go back and do it again but with the kind of information access we have nowadays. (takes teef out) You-young-people you-dont-realise-how-lucky-you-are (puts teef back in)

What I'm saying is:
Go to the MUSIC. look at the rules later. I've found that YouTube is an amazing source of music (I was wary of it to begin with, I thought it was mostly people's own happy-slapping home videos (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) )
Just type Minuet and Trio into the search and you'll get everything from orchestral symphonic movements, with or without live view of orchestra, to 4-year-old Korean children playing on keyboards. In some cases you even get to see the sheet music.

See if you can find a good "model" for your own piece - you'll get lots of ideas about the contrast within the trio, and you'll find that there are many minuets which in spite of what I've said are as near as anything to ternary form, or don't modulate at the end of section A (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for instance)

I'd recommend always GO TO THE MUSIC first. Listen to as much as you can. Try to do your analysis by ear.

Have fun!!!

Thank you for this advice! I did this right before I started writing but I can see that now there is so many rules i'm not enjoying writing it as much. I will go back to listening to some good minuet and trio's and forget the rules for a bit.

I quite agree that we are lucky with the technology we have now...though I do believe its a bit of hindrance sometimes as sometimes a basic piano is all you really need. Also doing basic chorales- some people in my music group can't find parallels with out using Sibelius to find them- which although is useful, I find ridiculous that they can't just find them on their own.


Also just to thank everyone again you have all been a major help to me =) I can't thank you enough..Hopefully one day I can return the favour x

[kenm]

Hang on when you said

||:C1:||:C2:||

Is C2 a variation of C1? Not completely different?

In this particular work, yes. C2 starts with the first four bars of C1, but now in the dominant; then two bars take it back to the tonic and most of the rest of the section is a more flowing variation on C1.

[notmusimum]

Thankfully my daughter's college has 3 composition teachers as well as the head of music giving advice.

Good luck to you music fairy.

[wurlitzer]

This sounds very much more complicated than A level composition at my school. I am doing A2 music at the moment and the exam board is AQA... because I am the only person in my class AND chose to do a free composition, my teachers basically leave me to it and give me bits and pieces of advice regularly. After having written a piano trio (Piano, Violin, Cello) last year and gaining full marks I'm going for a classical Piano concerto this year, scores for Piano, strings, 2 Horns in C, Timpani in C and G, Flute, 2 oboes and 2 bassoons.

Aaaaaanyway! Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure I recall reading somewhere or other that one feature typical of minuets is that the opening of the second theme in the minuet is often similar to the opening of the first theme of the minuet, whether a right hand motif has been moved into the left hand, or whether the opening motif is now played in retrograde or as an inversion etc... Is this correct? This was actually one of the things I was quizzed about at my Cambridge interview in December and I stumbled around it a little (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

[linda.ff]

Aaaaaanyway! Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure I recall reading somewhere or other that one feature typical of minuets is that the opening of the second theme in the minuet is often similar to the opening of the first theme of the minuet, whether a right hand motif has been moved into the left hand, or whether the opening motif is now played in retrograde or as an inversion etc... Is this correct? This was actually one of the things I was quizzed about at my Cambridge interview in December and I stumbled around it a little (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

I can't immediately think of a single instance of this happening. Minuets are so diverse that I'd say the only rally typical feature is that they're in 3/4!