Polonaise (Piece 6)
Channel: umisuzume
Date: 2021-01-01

Happy New Year's! (at least on the Gregorian calendar)

Thank you for listening.

I have to say, playing this for 5 minutes to my own satisfaction was the hardest part in making this video... (being an intermediate pianist)

Stylistically, this piece leans on the more romantic side than my other works. It's also much longer, and was the most time-consuming. (I hope you made it through the whole video ^^) Subconsciously, I'd probably took in some Chopin-esque influences because I knew that he had written many polonaises. Yet while writing this, I focused mainly on the harmony on each beat and voicing (two voices are in the bass), characteristics which I've focused on in my previous pieces.

One might find it odd that a polonaise would be in 7/8 time, but I wanted to try to write a piece in 7/8 that didn't sound so "off". To do this, I just inserted one eighth note on the third beat, creating a false illusion of a slow triplet. Mostly my measures can be subdivided into groups of 4 and 3 beats (or 2, 2, and 3), divisions which create a lurching rhythm that I think contributes to the progression of the piece (also notice the dotted rhythm in the A section). Perhaps I played it a little faster than I expected, but then again, I could say that the player interpreted this piece in a different way than the composer.

Any advice in the comments section would be welcome!