Susan Maughlin Wood

Composer for Media and Concert Music

Seattle, WA USA

…is an award-winning independently contracting composer and artist seeking opportunities in film, educational apps, games and other media. While engaged in writing concert repertoire and chamber arrangements she is a visionary of passion projects including festival hits music video “Spectratta” (and its offshoot Butoh dance-fusion “Spectrutoh”) as well as documusic film “Coastal Fire: A Common Diary” which details the emotional fallout from the 2016 US presidential election on a personal and societal level, and which is every bit as relevant for the current election cycle. Susan holds a Master of Music in Film Composition from the Pacific NW Film Scoring Program at SFI, and served as Past President on the Board of Directors of the Seattle Composers Alliance.

Sonatina: what's in a name

April 26, 2016  /  Susan MaughlinWood

What comes to mind when you see the term Sonatina?

-Little Sonata

-All the lovely piano pieces I played when younger. (YES! Thanks, Nancy, for that. Especially Beethoven, Kuhlau, Clementi... so many I played or heard)

-Dunno. Something classical?

-A term invented retroactively after the form had already died out

-Most sources describe sonatina as a shorter form of the sonata that can be more loosely based on the form and is generally less technically demanding. However, further digging reveals that after having been largely abandoned in the romantic era, the sonatina re-emerged in the 20th century as no longer a didactic teaching example but a work meant for performance and even freer of formal constraints.

I'm here to tell you I have a new perspective after having written one for the Sonatina Festival.

Sonatina: A fun little idea that continually grows, stretches, and elaborates into a fully realized story with new chapters that present themselves as soon as there is framework to hang from, all the while maintaining the original sense of spontaneity and possibility.

Pianist Karin McCullough has been working with me to polish up my new Sonatina for Violin and Piano, "Parallel Plaid" to be performed at Wedgwood Presbyterian in NE Seattle during the session beginning at 3pm. After tonight's Call for Scores concert, I hope to see you Saturday when we bring this term to life!

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