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three études for perusal

The following three études were some which I wrote about half a century ago for my students to supplement their studies and exercises. Just thought I'd share, and invite perusal and response which would be appreciated. Thanks.

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Attachments:

Etude_2.mp3, 1.4 MB
Etude_3.mp3, 2.2 MB
Etude_5.mp3, 1.2 MB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Charles Greco on October 20, 2011 at 12:34pm

and here are the pdf files for the three etudes...

Attachments:

Etude_2.pdf, 1 MB
Etude_3.pdf, 551 KB
Etude_5.pdf, 1 MB

Permalink Reply by Fredrick zinos on October 20, 2011 at 1:34pm

Excellent writting!

Etude 2- Wonderful. The trade off of left and right hand possibly could have been better emphasized / expolited but in a piece of this brevity that may not have worked.

Etude 3 -Delightful. It seemed to be about half way between wistful and wimsey, kind of like chocolate with a touch of salt.

Etude 5-Very clever and somewhat reminded me of Prokofiev. I felt the unison passage at the end went on a bit too long and I was looking for a brief return of the opening ideas.

All in all, in my opinion, some of the best music posted on this site in quite a while. Mature, self assured, and self-contained. It is clear that the music is about the music and less so about the composer. Not swaggering or strutting,but artfully exposing some first rate content.. Most admirable is that these little bon-bons are never too long for their content.

Permalink Reply by Charles Greco on October 20, 2011 at 3:00pm

Thank you for your comments and opinion. I vaguely recall that at the time, I thought the Étude 3 was a bit too long. It was my intention for the students' study pieces to be able to be played in less than two minutes. Probably I did not want to take the risk of altering the scope of the étude by editing its length.

Thanks again for your remarks.

Fredrick zinos said:

Excellent writting!

Etude 2- Wonderful. The trade off of left and right hand possibly could have been better emphasized / expolited but in a piece of this brevity that may not have worked.

Etude 3 -Delightful. It seemed to be about half way between wistful and wimsey, kind of like chocolate with a touch of salt.

Etude 5-Very clever and somewhat reminded me of Prokofiev. I felt the unison passage at the end went on a bit too long and I was looking for a brief return of the opening ideas.

Permalink Reply by Charles Greco on December 3, 2011 at 12:50pm

Thank you. It was such a long time ago so I don't recall why I used 6/8 meter -- these were from a series of etudes I wrote for my students as study pieces, and there may have been some reason at that time. If you look at the melodic theme of the 5th Etude, you will note that it actually fits well into a 4/4 meter. I vaguely recall that part of the purpose of not using 4/4 was to address an inherent nature of a student who tended to very slightly emphasize the first beat of every measure.

Thanks again for your response.

Alain Mayrand said:

Very nice pieces Charles! The 5th one reminds me of Bartok and Hindemith.

I am curious: why did you chose to put the meter in the 5th Etude as 6/8 and not 3/4?