Sonata Exotique by Anthony Green

Anthony Green plays "Sonata Exotique" by Anthony Green

"During my first year of formal compositional study, my private teacher at the time Dr. Martin Amlin chided me in his own special way to write something serious. I became a bit scared and immediately started working on a piano piece that did nothing and went nowhere, despite my visions of grandeur. Ultimately, through scrapping that piece and improvising at the piano, the first line of Sonata Exotique was born.

Having played sonatas by the great masters, and having studied the form both in a classroom context and privately, I knew what a traditional sonata should do. However, I never composed an atonal sonata, and I was very curious as to how to organize the pitch material. Eventually, the opening cluster suggested to organize the motifs around the chromatic scale, hence the slow decent of the 'London Bridges' motif (which was completely unintentional). The long, chromatic decent of this motive suggests the short term ascending and descending gestures, which dominate the piece. It was truly surprising to me how well everything fit together despite my main reliance on the chromatic scale, there are still plenty of tonic-dominant relationships, similar to a traditional sonata. Most of these relationship happened by accident. Composing this sonata made me truly feel like a 'serious' composer, and I am eternally grateful to Dr. Amlin for all his help during the process.

Later in 2004 I began working on other movements for the sonata, but the compositional ideas in my head were, at the time, way above my comprehension and notational abilities. However, the fugue study that I composed in preparation for the fugue in this sonata fortunately was completed. Perhaps in the future I will return to this piece, attempt to get into the head of my compositional self at the age of 20, and complete the work (including some commentary from my older, more experienced self, of course!)."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Anthony
• Green
• Composer
• Sonata
• Exotique
• piano
• new
• music
• Etude
• II
• four
• voice
• fugue

[mentuemhet]

I'm the first to respond, yes! This sonata inspired me to get a grand piano and compose faster piano pieces, but...

Anthony, I'm starting to compose piano music. I'm having trouble composing faster piano pieces on paper. When I play something fast I can't imagine myself writing it on paper. Are there any techniques to this issue? Is Finale the answer? How did the famous composers do it without using Finale? How did you do it?

[piargno]

@mentuemhet Hello Carlos! I'm glad this inspired you! If I could offer you any tips, I would say you have to improve your muscle/pitch memory. Then play something fast while recording yourself. Then figure it out, then play it over and over slowly. Finale isn't an answer to anything, and "the famous composers" all had their individual ways. Baroque composers used a mixture of intimate knowledge of the instrument and counterpoint, which explains many composers as well. But most had amazing ears!