Compositions
My fully-notated compositions, mostly in neo-classical and neo-baroque styles.
I notate all my music using MuseScore, which is free and open-source. You can download it from musescore.org.
Audio files are also generated by MuseScore, but I hope to replace them with live recordings some day.
→ Last Day to April
A small vibraphone piece that is supposed to convey a feeling of a calm spring day.
Date: March 2022.
→ Vocalise (for clarinet and piano)
A small piece for clarinet and piano that is supposed to be as tender as it gets. It's not like I intentionally set out to make one, but it ended up that way. Written as a birthday gift for a certain gifted but very young (read: immature) clarinetist.
One funny bit is return to B♭-major from F♯-major by tonicizing its third degree (A♯) and ending up in the theoretical A♯-major key for a moment.
Date: March 2022.
→ Prelude (in A-major)
A short prelude I wrote as an experiment with modulation to distant keys. First it modulates from A to F using the Neapolitan chord in A as the common chord, since in F it's the diatonic subdominant chord: [♭II6 = IV6] V65 I. Then it goes back to F by treating the submediant chord in F as the subdominant in harmonic A-major: [vi = iv(♭3)] V/V♯1 V I.
Date: January 2022.
→ Prelude (in D-minor)
A short prelude in the neo-baroque style. In line with the authentic baroque tradition, all articulation and dynamics are left to the performer.
Date: January 2022.
→ What Could Have Been
A short piece for unaccompanied viola. If you want a program, the first theme represents thoughts about reality; while the second, danceable theme is a dream that can never come true.
I thought viola is the best instrument to express that kind of imagery due to its timbre and range.
Date: December 2021.
→ Widespread Belief
A short vibraphone piece I wrote to experiment with ambiguous tonality and enharmonic modulation.
Date: October 2021.
→ Album leaf (DDF)
A short piano piece written as a birthday gift for a friend whose initials are DDF, which is why the piece features a D D F# motive prominently.
Date: September 2021.
→ Contemplation
A wind quartet piece that combines imitative counterpoint with Russian folk motives.
Authentic Russian folk music has some distinctive recurrent features, such as the use of natural dominants in minor keys and certain elements of melodic language (like a V IV I motive, for example). There was also a tradition of folk polyphony. I wanted to experiment with that melodic and harmonic language and here's the result.
Date: August 2021.
→ Mare Cognitum
An overture (in the romantic sense of that word) for string orchestra.
Mare Cognitum is the location on the Moon where a space probe named Ranger 7 took the first close-up pictures of the lunar surface. It was the first spacecraft to reach the Moon and paved the way to the future soft landings. Hence the name of that location: a sea that has become known.
This overture is dedicated to all people of the world involved in space exploration. The transformation of the “tritone + descending whole-tone scale” into a diatonic melody is supposed to be symbolic of the Moon becoming a reachable research target from something distant and unknown.
Date: July 2021.
→ Prelude
A small lyrical prelude for the piano. The main self-imposed challenge was to include a long melody made from an ascending scale and harmonzie it so that it doesn't sound boring—that's in the middle section. Whether I succeeded is up to your judgement.
Date: June 2021.
→ Call to Adventure
A wind quintet piece in the style of fantasy RPG themes. It may become a theme for an actual RPG, if it ever gets made.
Date: May 2021.
→ Waltz (for those who came to this world too young in a time too old)
A vibraphone solo piece written as a birthday gift for a percussionist. The title is a reference to one of Erik Satie's sketches that he titled “Erik Satie draws himself and thinks that he was born very young in a time that was very old”.
Date: March 2021.
→ Gigue
A lively baroque dance for violin and piano, written as a gift for the violinist who got the the Winter Waltz a year earlier.
Date: October 2020.
→ A doubt if it be Us
A vibraphone solo piece inspired by (or at least named after) a poem written by Emily Dickinson. An experiment with tonality, and a potential soundtrack for a friend's project.
Date: April 2020.
→ Album Leaf (for M.M.)
A somewhat Satie'esque piece for a violinist friend.
The funny bits are voice leading using the seventh of a chord as a common tone and modulation to the relative minor using the vii of the major key as the common chord (the ii of the relative minor key).
Date: November 2019.
→ Gigue
It's a gigue—a lively baroque dance in a triple meter, exactly as you´d expect.
Date: December 2019.
→ Winter Waltz
A sad waltz for piano solo. Something of a nod to the tradition of minor key waltzes in the Russian classical music.
That tune sat half-written for like half a year, and I might have never completed its accompanying part if it wasn't for the birthday of a certain violinist who doubles as a harmony expert. I picked this one from the pile of drafts because it had modulations to the dominant key—at least something to make a decent gift for someone who knows much more about harmony than I do.
Date: October 2019.
→ Album Leaf (for I.N.)
A winter holidays present for our music theory professor. Originally, “album leaf” meant a short piece written as a gift for someone, in the era when handwritten poetry albums were popular, and this piece is exactly that.
Date: December 2018.
→ When I died, there was no one who could disprove it
A minimalist piece for a wind quartet and vibraphone that I wrote for Antonio Agostini during a contemporary music festival where he offered a master class in composition, and I decided to give his methods a try. Its title and intended program are taken from a single line poem by a psychedelic rock and punk musician Egor Letov.
Somehow I lost the MuseScore file, but if you want to actually perform it and need a different instrumentation, I can come up with something.
Date: November 2018.
→ Sarabande
By the romantic era, the word “sarabande” lost all connections to a particular baroque dance. Minor key, triple meter, let´s call it a sarabande.
Date: December 2017.
→ Fake Folk Dance
It could be called a polka, if you consider a polka in a minor key with prominent use of diminished chords a logical possibility.
Date: August 2017.
→ Ballad of an Epic Fail
It would make a good fantasy RPG theme I suppose, even though I didn't set out to make one.
Date: May 2017.
→ Rhythm Changes Prelude
The harmony of George Gershwin's song “I´ve Got Rhythm” is immensely popular with jazz composers, and served as a basis for numerous compositions such as Charlie Parker's “Confirmation”.
I thought it would be fun to write something vaguely classical-sounding based on the same chord progression. The main challenge for me was to connect the B section chords smoothly, as it consists entirely of secondary dominants (a ragtime progression) and doesn't provide any obvious resolutions.
Date: April 2017.
→ Awkward Waltz for Ann
The initial idea for the chord progression was to descend from the I to the V by major seconds. Funnily enough, later my friend pointed me to a very dissimilar song with a similar harmonic idea, “Stray Cat Strut” by Brian Setzer.
The other idea was to write a piece that can be viewed as a jazz piece with an overly elaborate intro, or a fully notated piece with improvised sections. Something of a third stream perhaps.
The dedication was added after writing, to make it a last moment gift for a certain Ann who played double bass.
Date: March 2017.