New Music Alert! Music Give-away Winner's Guitar Piece (Sonata 1756)

Greetings everyone! I've got something really special for you today. I figure our lucky winner of the 100 Likes Music Give-away has had enough time alone with his prize. Time to share it with you all too! Drum roll, please!

I present to you Sonata 1756, a classical guitar piece dedicated to Blakely J. Chambers. Check it out over on the Listen page or check it out here in the video below. If you happen to be a guitar player looking for a challenge, check out the Sheet Music page. There's a link there that will take you to Sheet Music Plus to download Sonata 1756. It's 29 pages long, so prepare yourself.

The title Sonata 1756 is based on the year construction began on Fort Loudoun in what would become the great state of Tennessee. The fort was held by the British until it was eventually seized by the Cherokee in 1760. The artwork is based on aerial shots of the fort. The outline of the fort is colored in British Flag Red, while the landscapes textures are faded in stock photos with some coloring on them to make them look more like a map. The actual contours of the geography were free-handed in MS Word.

Sonata 1756 is written in, you guessed it, sonata form. This form is characterized by 3 main sections: the exposition, the development, and the recapitulation. The exposition is usually made of two different themes. The second theme is usually in the dominant of the key of the first theme. In this case, theme 1 is in A major while theme 2 is in E major. E major is the dominant of A major. In the development section, fragments of the first two themes and even some new content are thrown about in various unstable key centers, heightening tension and preparing us for the recapitulation. In the recap, the first theme comes back in the original key with some flashy new ornamentation to spice it up. The second theme follows, but is now in the key of the first theme. A major in this case.

As far as difficulty, Sonata 1756 is probably the most difficult guitar piece that I've written to date. It was NOT supposed to turn out that way though. When I first started working on the piece back in November of 2019, I had envisioned a short, relatively easy guitar piece. Then I beat my head against a wall for two months and got rid of 80% of the material I had started with. Sonata 1756 went from being an easy piece to a nearly 20 minute long technical behemoth. Because of that, we still only have a MIDI file to listen to at the moment. It's all playable. I just need to practice more.

There are many challenging rhythmic parts in Sonata 1756, most notably the use of polyrhythms. For example, 2:3 polyrhythms are fairly common throughout the piece. During the Recapitulation section, that 2:3 turns into a 3:4 polyrhythm. There is also a fair bit of syncopation involved, even within the polyrhythms.

Another feature of Sonata 1756 is the use of many different keys. The first theme starts in A major, followed by a second theme in E major. The second half of that theme modulates to C# minor and gradually works its way back to A major for the repeat. The second time we get to this theme, instead of modulating back to A, we head for C# major territory. (Uh-oh, ugly key signature alert!) And to think all of this just gets us through the first 5 or 6 pages out of 29!

I tried to stretch myself when it came to what guitar techniques were used in Sonata 1756. There is a good bit of rasgueado work involved in this piece, something I didn't use much in the past. I also tried to make sure that my fingers were going to chord shapes that I didn't use very much. Another technique I added in (though not as much as wanted at first) is tremolo picking. I have always loved the sound of this technique whenever I'd see a classical guitarist play, but I'd never been very good at it myself. After 12 years of playing guitar and then using the technique in this new composition, I can now say that I am almost OK at it. (MORE PRACTICE!)

Thank you all for taking the time to read all this and for supporting me in my musical endeavors. This piece wouldn't have been possible without you. It was fun to write to celebrate our 100+ likes on Facebook. I will see you all at 200 for another contest!

Cheers,

Nathan C. Curtis