# Piano concerto in A major. Classical style of course ;)



## kostas papazafeiropoulos

This a piano concerto in A major. I post this only because had promised it to Aramis here on this forum months ago. I hope everyone to enjoy it. Thank you .


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## Ravndal

Very enjoyable and well done! Bravo


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## Aramis

Great job. Like your other pieces: skillful and written with flair. But to make my comment more substantial, let me point out some things that I thought could be better. The heart of concerto, slow movement, stays for too much of it's lenght in the same minor more and mood. It leasts seven minutes, but it felt slightly drawn-out to me, because it lacked a major mood shift somewhere in the middle of it (just for example) . In comparison, the 3rd movement has this aspect masterfully balanced. I also thought that 1st movement's exposition was too long and the modulation around 1:00 wasn't entirely smooth. If I were you, I'd make the piano have a short enterance prior to 1:28 and make it fall into the theme which starts at this point. But you don't have to listen to me, as I couldn't write such concerto myself. It's still quite splendid the way it is.


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## kostas papazafeiropoulos

Aramis of course your comment is very interesting. I also like to read substantial opinion like yours. Thank you very much for listening to the concerto.


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## Symphonical

There are some marvelous moments here! Nice tempos, was extremely tuneful and melodic but brilliantly rhythmic also. If I was to suggest a little something, give more independence of line to the other instruments. Let the bassoon or the oboe play solo figures and phrases and separate the lower strings from the upper to give a more interesting texture at times. Really, apart from that, wonderful writing and just what I'd expect from a classical concerto.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

You have a profound knowledge of classical style as evident from this piece, which is very well written from a structural and harmonic perspective and I would be very impressed if you had composed it on manuscript originally as they would have done in the 18th century. 

One thing I am very interested in is if your knowledge of composition and historicity can be translated into things like a 15th century motet, late renaissance consort music, a baroque orchestral suite, a romantic piano trio, a 12-note composition for mixed ensemble or even other styles? Breadth of knowledge will further enhance your skill and technique and possible even open your mind up to appreciating music and composers which you may not have even heard of before! 

One question I would like to ask you: are you well equipped with composition and orchestration textbooks from a range of eras in music history?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Now that I think of it, there is only one problem I have with this composition: no matter how good it is, it doesn't speak _you._ It is the voice of someone else and I do get the feeling much of your music is like this. You're trying to be someone other than yourself through your creations. This can be a positive thin when done right; in my previous post I suggested that you try to imitate as many styles as possible to learn from them and expand your knowledge. Once you've mastered many ways of composing you won't need to be a 2nd rate Mozart, you will start to create music your own way.

Keep composing! :tiphat:


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## aimee

delightful!
I enjoyed listening to your work and will explore the rest of your channel later.
Thanks for sharing.


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## kostas papazafeiropoulos

First of all, this (as all of my compositions) are written first on paper and then on Sibelius. I can't compose in front of a pc (i get tired pretty easily). 
I have composed not a lot thought in differente styels. But my main style is classical for the simple reason that i like to compose what i like to listen to. 
As for the orchestration. When i learned music i was exposed to the classical period and i was taught orchestration by listening to my favorite composers. I had an idea pretty much of what was happening and later i listened to various periods (it was much easier as i had a strong base of all the neccesery things). I nevr had orchestration lesson of compositional lesson. All came through observation. 
As for my own voice... I believe that i always write as me. My writing equals me.  But i ALWAYS think that i can be much better. I don't if i;ll be writing in the same style in 10 years/ I may be completely different. 
I have to thank you very much for listening and commenting to my video and your comment your very helpful to me in many ways. 

Best regards


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## Ravndal

Good points. To compose is something very personal, and if you like classical era best, why not write in that style?  but easy to end up writing things you know well. Sometimes one should challenge oneself.


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## kostas papazafeiropoulos

Trust me. it is very challenging ang very difficult!


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## Torkelburger

Ravndal said:


> Good points. To compose is something very personal, and if you like classical era best, why not write in that style?


The answer to that question is simple: Because there are already countless pieces by countless composers who already have.

If that's your bag, fine, but don't expect kudos from me for any originality whatsoever; and you shouldn't expect too many performances by too many serious musicians. I attend concerts regularly and I've never seen anywhere once, a brand new composition strictly written in a baroque or classical style that is a mock-up of an established composer.

Think about it. If you were an accomplished musician, conductor, orchestra, why would you want to play (and pay for) something that sounds REALLY, REALLY close to Mozart or Haydn (but not near as good), when you can just may as well PLAY THE REAL THING instead? It's not like there's some shortage of brilliant classical music written by musical geniuses or something.

BUT, now think of yourself as an accomplished musician, conductor, orchestra, and you've come across a composer who SOUNDS LIKE NO ONE ELSE and is one of a kind. Like Takemitsu. Or Zappa. Or a whole slew of many others. Aren't THOSE the composers that are holding up to the geniuses of the past?


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## Ravndal

I said composing is personal, not necessarily ambitious and serious. Belive it or not, but some compose for own happiness. We don't know about kostas goal with his composing. It might be a hobby? I think he knows that if you want to succeed you can't be stuck in past era's.

Don't be so darn serious. Just because he shares his sounds at a public website doesn't mean he aims for the top.


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## Aramis

Torkelburger said:


> Think about it. If you were an accomplished musician, conductor, orchestra, why would you want to play (and pay for) something that sounds REALLY, REALLY close to Mozart or Haydn (but not near as good), when you can just may as well PLAY THE REAL THING instead?


Mozart and Haydn are not the only classical composers and classical style is not their personal musical voice, it's idiom in which they did create their personal voices. So did other classical composers from Gluck to J.M. Kraus. They all composed in classical style, and yet they are all original and different. If Kostas, or anybody else, wants to work on his individual style, he might do so without abandoning classical principles of composition.



> BUT, now think of yourself as an accomplished musician, conductor, orchestra, and you've come across a composer who SOUNDS LIKE NO ONE ELSE and is one of a kind. Like Takemitsu. Or Zappa. Or a whole slew of many others. Aren't THOSE the composers that are holding up to the geniuses of the past?


Oh, yes, Takemitsu, Zappa. Most of 39432958727432 contemporary composers who have their works performed by "accomplished musicians" are neither Takemitsu nor Zappa and whether "backward" or modern, most of them do not "sound like no one else".


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## Torkelburger

Aramis said:


> Mozart and Haydn are not the only classical composers and classical style is not their personal musical voice, it's idiom in which they did create their personal voices. So did other classical composers from Gluck to J.M. Kraus. They all composed in classical style, and yet they are all original and different. If Kostas, or anybody else, wants to work on his individual style, he might do so without abandoning classical principles of composition.
> 
> Oh, yes, Takemitsu, Zappa. Most of 39432958727432 contemporary composers who have their works performed by "accomplished musicians" are neither Takemitsu nor Zappa and whether "backward" or modern, most of them do not "sound like no one else".


Given that line of reasoning, one wonders how we even arrived at the classical period at all. Or the Romantic, or the Modern. Mozart and Haydn and all composers of the classical period wrote in the classical idiom and the classical style...which was their current time period. They did not write in the previous idioms or styles. They wrote in the idioms of their time. They also moved the musical idiom forward. That's part of why writing about your own time and history is so significant.

As for your other comment, history fortunately doesn't share your admiration for hacks, followers, and dullards. One of the main goals of artists and their patrons is originality and to be like no one else as much as possible, whether they are successful according to Aramis's tastes or not.


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## Aramis

Torkelburger said:


> As for your other comment, history fortunately doesn't share your admiration for hacks, followers, and dullards.


You keep stretching the point. First it's about having works performed. Now it's about becoming part of the history? Similiarly to what I've said before, many (or most of) composers who are successful today, without measuring them with "Aramis's tastes" or Torkelburger's tastes - simply those who have their works professionally performed, will not be recognized by history. Being a composer yourself, you should perfectly understand that, unless you fancy your name in music history books 200 years from today. In such case, good luck. The author of concerto presented here already expressed that he has no desire for anything like great international fame and recognized himself as hobbyist, so attacking him for writing in classical style because it doesn't move the music forward or doesn't have potential for historical magnitude is plain ridiculous.


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## Torkelburger

Aramis said:


> You keep stretching the point. First it's about having works performed. Now it's about becoming part of the history? Similiarly to what I've said before, many (or most of) composers who are successful today, without measuring them with "Aramis's tastes" or Torkelburger's tastes - simply those who have their works professionally performed, will not be recognized by history. Being a composer yourself, you should perfectly understand that, unless you fancy your name in music history books 200 years from today. In such case, good luck. The author of concerto presented here already expressed that he has no desire for anything like great international fame and recognized himself as hobbyist, so attacking him for writing in classical style because it doesn't move the music forward or doesn't have potential for historical magnitude is plain ridiculous.


Um, yes, I will go out on a limb here and make the crazy assertion that it would logically follow that if it's about history, then having works performed would likely be involved.

I'm not saying we're trying to get famous. We are talking about originality and where it comes from. The excellent point was made that this music "doesn't speak you. It is the voice of someone else" and "You're trying to be someone other than yourself through your creations," which are excellent (and in my opinion, accurate) points. This is the Numero Uno concern great composers and teachers of the past have stressed and good students have strived to correct. This is what Nadia Boulanger stressed (as testified by her students) and what Leonard Bernstein stressed at Tanglewood (as testified by two of my professors who studied with him).

And *I* already addressed the author of concerto presented here expression that he has no desire for anything like great international fame, etc. From my initial post, "If that's your bag, fine, but don't expect kudos from me for any originality whatsoever; and you shouldn't expect too many performances by too many serious musicians."

As for calling me ridiculous for my criticism, I'll take it, given that you'd have to say that same thing to Aaron Copland. I'd take being in his company any day of the week.

What say you Aaron? Ah, yes:

"My love of the music of Chopin and Mozart is as strong as that of the next fellow, but it does me little good when I sit down to write my own, because their world is not mine and their musical language not mine. The underlying principles of their music are just as cogent today as they were in their own period, but with these same principles one may and one does produce a quite different result. When approaching a present-day musical work of serious pretentions, one must first realize what the objective of the composer is and then expect to hear a different sort of treatment than was customary in the past.
…We usually recognize the period a composition belongs in as an essential part of its physiognomy. It is the uniqueness of any art expression that makes even approximate duplication in any other period inconceivable. That is why the music lover who neglects contemporary music deprives himself of the enjoyment of an otherwise unobtainable aesthetic experience."

Aaron Copland, _What to Listen for in Music_, Chapter 16: "Contemporary Music"

There is also an extended passage in which he discusses how previous periods of musical styles reaches an "apogee" to where "nothing fresh is extracted from it" and that "different kinds of music had to come into being" and one cannot "expect" artists to "emote" with "accents" of the past.


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## Op.123

Was this inspired by Mozart's 23rd piano concerto? 

Brilliant works, by the way.


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## PetrB

Ravndal said:


> I said composing is personal, not necessarily ambitious and serious. Belive it or not, but some compose for own happiness. We don't know about kostas goal with his composing. It might be a hobby? I think he knows that if you want to succeed you can't be stuck in past era's.
> 
> Don't be so darn serious. Just because he shares his sounds at a public website doesn't mean he aims for the top.


Hobby or profession, 'mimic' work is at best, 'clever,' and is just a child copying something they admire, or an adult hiding behind a mask. At the very best, it is well-done pastiche. Here, there are so many compositional flaws in the smaller details which are not about any era but all about the typical (near interchangeable) flaws which show up in about every early comp student's work. This leaves a glib shell of the classical style without even getting in deep enough to be a decent pastiche.

Original is vastly misunderstood, and to qualify it does not have to be something wholly new and innovative, but an original work meant to pass as old style is not really a part of what most would call 'original.'

This is pastiche here, representing a lot of work, but with basic skills flawed, and (I think) all the effort put toward it is not doing anything at all toward the composer's development as a composer. So far, the several 'classical style' pieces submitted are interchangeable, show no difference in quality, share the identical weaknesses.

As a hobby, yeah, fine. As a new piece of pastiche to be seriously considered (would one really much consider a 'new' piece of pastiche -- be impressed that someone can write that way?)

Not really, though basically it shows some real ability, there are too many consistently comp student 101a flaws combined with, it seems in the mimicking of an antique style, "nothing to say."

With the present skills, I would very much look forward to something in the composer's 'own voice.' Continuing to write in this manner will never have him finding his own voice.

ADD: hobby or other, finding your own voice is the only thing which distinguishes anyone's work as having any real interest.

I have nothing to argue against any art as hobby for anyone. I can quickly begin to lose any and all interest after you've shown me your third ceramic tiled ashtray with its generic period design, basically indistinguishable from the first one you showed me.


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## PetrB

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## Chordalrock

PetrB said:


> finding your own voice is the only thing which distinguishes anyone's work as having any real interest.


This is a statement about your own values, and what's more it's a statement that sounds as trite and meaningless as "everything is possible" and other such popular cliches.

If you are a composer who doesn't value a naive approach to composition, one would think that you at least had a stronger philosophy to base your compositional approach on. The "own voice" philosophy is easily dismissed as sentimental rationalisation: most people don't like everything by a great composer, so clearly the interest in a piece of music isn't found in the composer's voice, but in something else entirely.


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## PetrB

Chordalrock said:


> This is a statement about your own values, and what's more it's a statement that sounds as trite and meaningless as "everything is possible" and other such popular cliches.
> 
> If you are a composer who doesn't value a naive approach to composition, one would think that you at least had a stronger philosophy to base your compositional approach on. The "own voice" philosophy is easily dismissed as sentimental rationalisation: most people don't like everything by a great composer, so clearly the interest in a piece of music isn't found in the composer's voice, but in something else entirely.


The pieces which make an impression have some, wild innovation or experimentation not necessary, "musical personality" which is, no matter how unemotional or detached the composer or the work, a distinct one.

I think the OP is having fun enough, and I said that is fine. I also said after the third ceramic tiled ashtray in a generic imitation of an older style, there was nothing more of interest past the novelty of seeing the first one.

Whatever this young hobbyist composer wants of his music, he is infinitely better off writing something more directly from within himself rather than trying to make a pass-for classical era piece, the exercise of which he has already had the benefit.

I would much prefer to hear something from him which is more naked, and not clothed in the manner of another era.

"The composers' voice," means, literally, that even within a limited genre, your music does not sound quite like the music of anyone else. That is anything but a "sentimental rationalization." It is not my idiosyncratic personal evaluation, but a long-standing tenet for which there is widespread consensus.

Who knows, though, maybe 'they' are _all wrong_ and _you alone are right_?

This music in the rather specific manner of another age is nonetheless disperse. Nothing but the fact someone is fairly adept at imitating a past style comes through, ergo, nothing is communicated. Amateur hobbyist or earnest professional, one would think for the efforts put in, one would want to 'get through' to the listener -- if not, why are the OP's works presented, i.e. why not do them for himself and them tuck them away in a drawer or a file cabinet someplace?


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## kostas papazafeiropoulos

Petrb i can't understand why you keep posting in this thread. If you don't like what i compose it is ok. 
But you can't make everyone to agree with you. You posted your opinion long ago. It wasn;t meant for you in the first place.


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## Chordalrock

PetrB said:


> The pieces which make an impression have some, wild innovation or experimentation not necessary, "musical personality" which is, no matter how unemotional or detached the composer or the work, a distinct one.


You are now suddenly talking about individual pieces having their own personality when they are any good, instead of good composers having their own personality that provides value to their pieces. So which is it?

I would agree that a great piece of music has its own distinct personality. I would disagree that this has anything necessarily to do with the composer's voice.



PetrB said:


> "The composers' voice," means, literally, that even within a limited genre, your music does not sound quite like the music of anyone else. That is anything but a "sentimental rationalization." It is not my idiosyncratic personal evaluation, but a long-standing tenet for which there is widespread consensus.
> 
> Who knows, though, maybe 'they' are _all wrong_ and _you alone are right_?


I wasn't questioning that some composers have mannerisms. I was questioning that having mannerisms carries any great value, let alone decisive value. Perhaps I'm alone in making sense, perhaps I'm not alone in making sense. Same difference.


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## PetrB

kostas papazafeiropoulos said:


> Petrb i can't understand why you keep posting in this thread. If you don't like what i compose it is ok.
> But you can't make everyone to agree with you. You posted your opinion long ago. It wasn;t meant for you in the first place.


I marvel at your musical aptitudes, especially if you have little or no formal training, that alone is pretty amazing. I realize you are having fun for yourself. Maybe better put, there is more fun in store if you explore writing music less imitative? Because if you have those innate skills (which some might near kill to have) you are not getting the full range of enthrallment out of them for yourself -- at least I think so.

I promise to refrain from any comment if your next piece is in a very similar vein to the ones you've posted so far.


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## PetrB

Chordalrock said:


> You are now suddenly talking about individual pieces having their own personality when they are any good, instead of good composers having their own personality that provides value to their pieces. So which is it?


They're pretty much one and the same, and (somewhat contrary to my repeat comment on the OP's piece) that can also include 'donning a manner' or writing 'à la manière de.'

A decent attentive listen to the "the Russian / the Neoclassical / the Serialist" Stravinsky works ought to convince that very clearly the same composer is responsible for those highly varied works in highly varied styles.

I am not going to further urge a hobbyist who delights in making 'classical-like' pieces, but do advocate, hobby or otherwise, finding some way into a more personal expression: once that is done, returning to making a 'classical-like' piece will almost certainly bring to it more vitality and less of an anonymous / generic quality as this piece still sounds. The "sound" of such an effort after finding a more personal expression might be damned near the same, but I can at least virtually guarantee something much more interesting will come from having taken those steps.

I'm sure if you drop the contrarian shield you will be able to think of most of the classical music you like and love and easily recognize and then say that each of those pieces has a character far more unique than this classical-like essay of the OP.


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## Chordalrock

In my experience at least, people generally don't listen to music to appreciate the personal quirks and mannerisms of a composer. They listen to music to hear interesting musical material, good melodies, great counterpoint, fascinating harmony, thrilling rhythm, beautiful sounds, moods, and so on. Those are the value of the music and combine to create its personality, its DNA. Mannerisms are like genetic markers, they are not the DNA itself.

I don't understand why you keep referring to the most obvious observations and truths as contrarian. Not poetic enough, I guess.


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## Guest

Very well crafted pastiche indeed, Kostas, hats off to you! The quality of the playback was a bit of shame : the relentless, 'unbending' pulse, but that's computers and beyond your control; in any case, with the playback and the score before us we can very well imagine how it would sound on real instruments. I enjoyed it very much indeed. For the first movement, there were times however when I felt the material was being over-repeated (or "recycled" I suppose I could say) and I had moments of frustration when I thought a passage was going to move up to the "next level" so to speak only to hear that it didn't. 
I think then that my main point would be to reduce the number of bars of pure "passage work" to deliver a tighter, more compact movement. My comment here makes me think of that film "Amadeus" when some aristocrat complains to Mozart that the piece had "too many notes"! Anyway, I say again that you have done some excellent work there.


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## Vasks

TalkingHead said:


> the relentless, 'unbending' pulse, but that's computers and beyond your control


No, you can assigned a different tempo marking on any/every beat to make a passage feel more flexible. It just takes more time which some composers chose not to do.

Now maybe some can't because they don't use quality notation programs and even if they do maybe they don't do what I do which is first create a score that is for how it will sound (extra subtle changes of tempo, or create a pseudo-col legno effect by adding a soft wood block sound to the string pitches that are to be played "col legno", etc). Then I duplicate the score with the sounds I want and remove the extra markings (all the subtle tempo markings, the wood block, etc).


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