Welcome!
I’m Maxwell Lowery, a composer, violist, and music teacher! This website is where you can purchase sheet music for my compositions and arrangements.
Scroll down to learn more about me!
About me
I started composing music in 2011 when I was in eighth grade, after my brother showed me how to use MuseScore—I still use MuseScore today! Here is a photo of me performing my first-ever composition at the junior high talent show.
In high school, I had huge support from my orchestra teacher. He programmed an entire string symphony that I composed on a concert, and encouraged me to enter the Illinois state composition competitions, where I won several prizes.
So you’ve played Brahms’s, Vieuxtemps’s, and Bowen’s sonatas, Bruch’s Romance, and various works by both Schumanns, and you’re looking for your next big passionate Romantic-Era work. Well, look no further than my own 2018 sonata for Viola and Piano!
Though I live in the 21st century, I composed this piece in a style that emulates the late 19th century. Three passionate and dramatic movements encompass a wide range of common-practice-era compositional techniques. Memorable themes cover the spectrum from dark and turbulent to soaring and ecstatic. Flashy virtuosic fireworks contrast with introspective lyricism. Contrapuntal wizardry is on full display—motivic transformation saturates the entire work, fugato sections appear in each movement, and hidden canons embellish developmental passages. If you are a fan of the Romantic Era, I believe this is the piece for you!
Listen to a recording here! (Note-this is a link to a score video, with an out-of-date score. The score that you are purchasing was heavily revised and modernized in 2026!)
Beautiful and heartwarming, Nostalgia floats between bright and dark moods as you ponder your bittersweet memories of childhood. At a contemplative 7 minutes, it is the perfect slow piece to add to the middle of your recital program if you are looking for something contemporary and unaccompanied!
At the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), I started out as a viola major, added a music theory double major, and eventually added minors in composition and eurhythmics. I am proud of my high-level training, which informs and enhances my work. I wrote tons of short exercises/pieces during my music theory coursework, such as this fugue!
From 2011-2018, I wrote music emulating the common practice era. My studies of counterpoint and tonal harmony culminated in my colossal Sonata for Viola and Piano in d minor (2018), the earliest piece that is available here on my website! This piece has it all: memorable themes both turbulent and ecstatic; flashy virtuosic fireworks; and contrapuntal wizardry. I performed it at my CIM junior recital.
In the second half of 2018, I officially became a composition minor at CIM and started taking composition lessons for the first time in my life. With that guidance, I was emboldened to make a huge shift in my creative output. 19th-century styles were out, and I focused on finding my own voice. I sought inspiration from programmatic themes and pursued a more modernist compositional style. The first piece I came up with is the epic On the Trail, an eleven-movement piano quartet about hiking a mountain. Three of my friends and I performed the world premiere that school year.
I almost always write for strings or piano. To expand my horizons, my composition lessons focused on orchestration and learning about other instruments. I really enjoyed learning about the harp, and composed Landscapes (2019), my flute, viola, harp trio. Three scenes inspired by landscape paintings take the listener to the nighttime Ocean, the dark and spooky Forest, and the Plains with wild horses racing about. The first movement has also been performed separately as Moonlit Seascape.
In December 2018, violist Molly Wise, who is now my wife, commissioned a short work for solo viola to perform at her CIM senior recital. I wrote Nostalgia (2019), capturing the idea of bittersweet memories with light and dark moods, various open string drones that accompany the same tune in different ways, and a fixation on major seventh chords, my favorite type of chord. Molly gave the world premiere.
On the Trail will be available for purchase soon! Email me if you really want it and I can speed up the process.
Landscapes will be available for purchase soon! Email me if you really want it and I can speed up the process.
