Top Groups

Show all

Discussions

C minor sonata by Mozart for String Trio, Feedback

in Strings Group

I am currently working on arranging some more Mozart sonatas, since Public Domain scores don't count towards my non-pro score total and unlike Beethoven sonatas that seem to get me overwhelmed, Mozart sonatas never do that. A few people suggested that I shrink the quartet into a trio in my K 545 arrangement to get a more full sound. I didn't though because save for the second movement, where I would have to do some harmonizations, I saw and heard 4 melodic voices, 2 per hand in the sonata. 

However, I did find a sonata that Mozart wrote 4 years before his K 545 sonata that I figured would be perfect for a trio arrangement, his Piano Sonata in C minor, another well known sonata of his. I noticed that the first movement tends to be where I get the most arrangement mistakes. A few of the triplet passages, I took up an octave to avoid the cellist having to do double duty. The violinist playing eighth notes over a sustained quarter note is one thing, The cellist having to do triplets while sustaining a whole note is a totally different story and is an impossible task. 

Thus, I took some of the triplet passages up an octave. The triplet passages that I took up an octave all involve a cascade from the violin to the viola before the cello becomes the solo instrument for a while. Except for these triplet passages that involve the instrument cascades, I kept everything in the original octave unless it got too low(which was rare) and then of course I would raise it by an octave to keep it in range. I missed a few slurs here and there, I will fix those in the second draft of the first movement arrangement. In the development section, I tended to have the  staccato figure in octaves because it was in octaves everywhere else. Even the Coda still had it in octaves, just scattered a bit.

Here is what I have arranged so far of the sonata:

https://musescore.com/user/50070/scores/5692897

Bars 1-185 are all the bars of the first movement. This is what I want feedback on. Are there any impossible double stops in there? Is there anything I can do about the dynamics to make it sound better? I would love some detailed feedback on what exactly I did wrong so that I can improve the first movement arrangement, and maybe have the entire second movement arranged at the same time(That did happen with K 545, I got feedback on the first movement, I improved the first movement and finished arranging the second movement at the same time). 

3 months ago
no comments
Add your thoughts