Get this out of my head!

November 9, 2011 12:03 PM

Please help me remember what piano piece I played, more than 10 years ago!

OK, this is going to be made somewhat more difficult by the fact that I can't provide any sound clips of the bars that I can remember. Here is what I do know:

It's written for the piano
Definitely in B flat major
Very early classical style - Haydn, Handel, that sort of time.
It's not a sonatina, probably not a sonata (at least if it is, it's only one movement), I was actually thinking minuet but I can't find any on youtube that fit.
Difficulty is around ABRSM grade 5/6
It plays around with dissonance quite a lot, especially later on in the piece, before resolving into the subdominant major (E flat). That's not the end, but that's where I get stuck.

I've tried playing it to Shazam on my phone, and so far it's told me that I'm playing Sweet Child o' Mine and Freddie Freeloader by Miles Davis. Clearly that ain't gonna work.

If anyone has somewhere I can easily enter the score online I'm fairly handy with musical notation. Please help me figure out what this is so I can relearn the ending!

posted by fearnothing to media & arts (9 answers total)

That's tough. Pretty much any piece written in Bb major in that era is going to modulate to Eb at some point, and likely have escalating chromaticism in passing tones as ornaments and melodies get fancier as the piece progresses. I mean probably not every single piece, but definitely too many to draw a bead on one.

Do you have way to record what you know of it?
posted by TheRedArmy at 12:30 PM on November 9, 2011

Händel: 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759
Haydn: 31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809

Minuet: 3/4 time, could be a part of a Baroque suite (Händel), an early classical sonata (Haydn) or a free-standing piece.

So. is it in 3/4? Is it in written in the Baroque style or in the Classical style?
What's the overall structure - just a free-standing A-repeat-B-repeat piece or Minuet-Trio-Minuet?
(Before I dig through all of Händel's suites and Haydn's sonatas and other classical free-standing pieces...)
posted by Namlit at 12:31 PM on November 9, 2011

Good point. No, it's not a minuet then, because it's in 2/4 or 4/4. Probably 2/4 given the pace and phrasing. AABACD type. It's early classical rather than baroque. I don't know of any other movements, though I suppose there could be.

And TheRedArmy, I'm sorry, not since moving house, my previous method of recording is broken and I don't have another right now.
posted by fearnothing at 12:44 PM on November 9, 2011

What I would do is look up early classical composers, see if any names ring a bell, then find recordings of their music in libraries. Also check this music score library: http://imslp.org/
posted by foxjacket at 12:53 PM on November 9, 2011

Can I assume that if you have a phone capable of running Shazam, it would also be capable of uploading video to YouTube?
posted by holterbarbour at 1:49 PM on November 9, 2011

holterbarbour - clever schemes like that are far too subtle for me.

Sorry about the quality.
posted by fearnothing at 2:30 PM on November 9, 2011

Mozart Piano Sonata in Bb K. 570, third movement
posted by dfan at 3:45 PM on November 9, 2011

And the score is available here on IMSLP.
posted by dfan at 3:50 PM on November 9, 2011

How is it possible! I was thinking of the rondo of Mozart's other B-flat sonata, k333, all evening, and found that it somehow didn't fit the dissonance description and the indicated technical level. And that while I just the other day played through this one, which I've performed in concert a few years ago. dfan rocks.
posted by Namlit at 3:03 AM on November 10, 2011 [1 favorite]