# When I'm out of "good" inspiration, I write Baroque suites



## TalkingPie (May 15, 2020)

This started with a little sarabande I posted on Instagram to commemorate Bach's death anniversary. Then, I had a huge creative drought (y'know, to write in a more modern idiom), and kept writing new movements. The most difficult was by far the "fugue", and I'm not sure I'm 100% satisfied, but meh. I'd make 3-4 changes in the other movements, but they're quite small.

I think the 3 last numbers, starting at 10:24 are better than the first 3.

This piece is conceived in the line of 19th century pastiches, so the pianistic technique is somewhat more evolved, with a few instances where the pedal is necessary.






I have 2/3 of another suite, also written in uninspired moments.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

...nice work TP, excellent in fact. Good to see there's a solid technique behind you and as a result, some lovely moments.


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## JorgeDav (Apr 9, 2020)

That was incredible! Really really nice. I specially loved the Sarabande but I don't think there was a single spot I did not like. Amazing that it was all conceived in moments of "uninspiration". 

Can I ask you which resources did you use or would recommend for learning advanced counterpoint like this? I am learning music by my own and I ended up accumulating a bunch of books about the different fields of music but, in the case of counterpoint, I am still not sure about which resource to trust best, especially for trying to learn more complex counterpoint techniques and forms, such as modulations, invertible counterpoint or fugues. 

Thank you for sharing the music!


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## TalkingPie (May 15, 2020)

Thanks!

I really never seriously "learned" counterpoint per se, just harmony in general. Also, I don't think my counterpoint in this piece is that _advanced_, since it's mostly in 2 voices (and it's not even imitative counterpoint in general). Also, there probably are several egregious parallel 5ths and 8ves, but I'm just to chaotic to proofread my music properly.

I laid my foundations with Michel Baron's treatise, even though I don't agree with everything. He focuses quite a lot on strict renaissance harmony that was a bit outmoded even by baroque standards ( dude follows Duruflé quite a lot when he was a living fossil). Somebody gifted me Zamacois' treatise but it's the worst of all.

Later I read other treatises that I liked better: Piston's and Rimsky's. Another book I liked was Toch's Melodielehre. Anyways, the biggest source of knowledge is analyzing and playing what you want to emulate.

I have many of these books in my stash. I could find some of them only in Spanish, but from your name I assume that's ok with you


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## JorgeDav (Apr 9, 2020)

Thank you so much for your answer! I checked Michel Baron's Teatrise and it looks okay, maybe no for studying directly from there but for having it as a reference since all the chapters are well organized and online. Thank you so much for sharing your stash too! I had heard about Piston and Rimsky's book. Particularly, I think Rimsky's book has been, by far, the most useful teatrise about music I have ever read. No because of what he teaches but how he teaches it. I stopped in the chapter about chromatic chords, since I wanted to apply first what I learned, but I did all the exercises from the two first chapters and my composition skills improved so much. I have not read Piston's one yet but probably I will start checking it out. 

I was looking for Caplin and Torch books so bad! Thank you! Specially the one from Torch, since I have heard so many nice things of his books (I think the most famous one is "the shaping forces in music", which I could not find yet either). Yes, I can read it in spanish, so I will probably start reading it right now . 

Thank you so much for helping me! Again, really nice suite and awesome melodies! I would be happy if Torch's book got me even just a 1% closer to writing melodies like that! Thank you!


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