Impromptu in G minor (Shuey, Michael Gabriel Edouard)

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*#629168 - 0.72MB, 14 pp. -  0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - !N/!N/!N - 37×⇩ - Shueymg

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Shueymg (2020/6/1)

Publisher. Info. Michael Gabriel Edouard Shuey Copyright Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 [tag/del] Misc. Notes left hand melody, epic sound Purchase Javascript is required for this feature.

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By 1996 my piano and music theory ability began to develop. Discovering Chopin completely changed my style of preferred music to learn and my style of composition. After I began learning Chopin Preludes and Polonaises, I wanted to create a longer, and more epic sounding piece. The Impromptu in G-minor became that piece. At six and a half minutes long in length, the piece remains the longest I’ve ever written. Contrary to the name, the piece took me over 6-months to write and was indeed “calculated” in some areas. The name really came as a tribute to the Chopin style of listing great pieces simply as an Impromptu, a Prelude, an Etude, etc. Also as a tribute my composition style which born out of playing impromptu on the piano, inventing melodies and harmonies on the fly and eventually settling on something to write down. My favorite memory writing this piece was in high school detention. I wasn’t really a “bad” kid in school; just a tired one. I have never been a morning person and always stayed up way past any bed time. The accumulating sleep deprivation for a teenager led to several episodes of sleeping through an alarm clock, missing the school bus, and begging a parent to bring me to school with an excuse note. The school had a tardy policy whereby a certain amount of tardiness would lead to time in detention. It never really succeeded in changing my behavior. On the contrary, I usually took the dedicated time to do homework so I could come home to play more games, watch lots of TV, stay up late, miss more buses and do it all over again. My character and behavior was quite a bit different than the hooligans that spent time in detention for more typical reasons. It always brought a smile to my face to see the detention teacher’s puzzled look as he or she looked over the class to see notes being passed around with stealth, spitballs flying, and then see me writing on music on full orchestral-sized paper. In a way, this public display of contrast was my passive-aggressive teenage way of rebelling against the system. Music-wise, a few things stand out about this piece. First, it has an introduction lasting more than a measure or two, which was a first for me. I put this in as a bit of a prelude before the main theme is introduced. The intro sneaks in the sound of the left hand coming through, first as accented single notes, and then a second time as full octaves. This is the second distinguishing feature- a left handed melody. Being left-handed, I adored the fairly rare piano pieces featuring a left-handed melody. Chopin’s Prelude No. 6 in B-minor is the first I remember encountering (my high school piano teacher used to call that one “Chopin’s other Raindrop Prelude”, to distinguish it from the more known Raindrop prelude No. 15). With my Impromptu, however, the left hand is not meant to be a frail raindrop, but rather a boldly heroic sound. The bold sound makes me wonder if I should have just titled this, “I’m left handed, and proud of it” This piece is the first one that got attention drawn to me. Our Spanish class was returning from a Spanish class field trip were we performed “Summer Nights” from Greece in Spanish. We spent about an hour in the music room waiting for school to end. A few people played some pieces they knew on piano. At one point I sat down and played this Impromptu, nearly complete, just eagerly working out a few areas. By the end of the piece I looked up to a silent room with my classmates staring at me. “What was that? That was awesome”, someone asked. . “A piece I’m almost done writing”, I replied back. It was met with disbelief. I wasn’t known to anyone to even play piano, let alone compose music. “Muy bueno, Miguel”, my Spanish teacher applauded. I made a few musician friends out of that experience. One later nick-named me a “Chopianist” because all I played at that time was Chopin and composed romantic style music. I liked that people enjoyed my music and it encouraged me to do more. Looking back on my highschool yearbook, I always feel a litter bitter about not even being mentioned in the “musical talent” photos. Such is life.