Hello everyone! I am back this week with another steem performance. This week, I decided to record the first song from Mendelssohn's collection of Songs without Words (Lieder ohne Worte). I thought this piece would look nice with the lights, and I checked on youtube and could not find any other performances of it with the audio visualizer. Here is my performance:

About the piece/video

One of the things I love about Mendelssohn's music is how perfect it sounds. The songs without words truly are a reflection of Mendelssohn's ability to write the most lyrical music. This piece flows, and has a lot of ideas which get developed. As a result, it really feels satisfying when you reach the end.

I once had someone tell me that they don't like Mendelssohn's music because it always sounds like a good student's theory assignments - it never breaks any rules, and is totally predictable. I couldn't agree any less. While Mendelssohn's music definitely is really structural and perfect, it still has elements that theory students in the 200 years since his death haven't been able to mimic (otherwise there would be no need to perform Mendelssohn). When I hear a piece by Mendelssohn, I know it's Mendelssohn right away.

In regards to the video, I must admit that it took me a lot of time to make. I really wanted to experiment with using different colors, and I wanted the video to be perfect (or at least the limit as x approaches perfection).

In terms of structure, this piece is written in rounded binary form. This means that there is an A section (which repeats), and a B section which includes the A section in it. With this video, I decided to experiment with using 4 colors. I chose a pink, a light blue, a dark blue, and a purple. They were in that order for the A section, and my thinking was that the A section's material is more light/warm, and therefore I thought having the particles light colors, and the first colors light would reflect that. The B section seems to begin with a sway towards minor. Because of this, I decided to have the dark colors come first in the B section. That being said, the B section quickly returns to a light and hopeful feeling so I decided to add the color white to reflect this, and to reference that it's a new section.

In the return of the A section in the B section, I ordered the colors pink, light blue, blue, purple, white. I included white to reflect the fact that it is still technically the B section, and to demonstrate that some of the material from earlier in the B section is now incorporated into the A section. What originally lead to the dominant in the A section leads to the tonic in the B section.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading/watching this! I really appreciated the support that the first Steem performance got, and, as always, I greatly appreciate feedback (whether negative or positive). If you have a piece you would like to see performed, or a song you would like to see covered, please feel free to comment, and maybe I will consider performing it. Thanks again, and have an awesome day!