Compositions – Page 12 – An Echo That's Reversing

This got away from me.

My intent going in was to write an adagio in simple ABA with more tonal harmonies. Maybe like a Brahms slow movement or more one from a Walter Piston symphony. I’ve been brushing up on Piston symphonies during commutes and am enjoying getting reacquainted. My goals (chosen after I finished the last study) were tone color and dynamics. With this study, I feel like I’m writing better across the orchestra but am still floundering with combining instruments.

I wanted the first section to be tonal and melodic, but I worry that it has too much of a “pops” orchestral feel. That’s the risk I had worried about starting these studies: moving from tonality in rock music to orchestral risks sounding unchallenging.

As I was working through that languid opening, I switched gears to the second section: a major key chant/melisma interrupted with expansive declarations.

While fitting the first two sections together, I made notes on what became the third section, which was intended as a perversion of the themes that came before. This was written more fully on the piano during improvisation and though the polytonality worked very well on the keyboard it was a crazy mess trying to get it to work with orchestra. At one point I was going to leave it out because the tone felt wrong. I went through two earlier attempts before coming up with the final arrangement. The first had a very strict rhythm and mostly for winds, but it didn’t have the “edge” that I felt at the keyboard. The next attempt used written rubato and exaggerated cross rhythms (with almost no meter), but it just created too much chaos along with the polytonal dissonances. The final product ended up with a balance of chaos and structure, edging towards chaos. I think most of my time was spent just on this section.

The piece has an ABCBA structure. Languid and melodic, melisma, perversion of themes, abbreviated melisma, triste languid coda.

I still need to attempt an actual, beautiful adagio. Next goals: vivace and maybe try for a more organic structure without abrupt changes.

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Orchestral Study #2 (driving and chaotic)

Orchestral Study #1 (flowing and hymn-like)

Orchestral Study #2 (driving and chaotic)

Orchestral Study #3 (adagio with melisma)

Orchestral Study #4 (allegro)

Orchestral Study #5 (variations)

Orchestral Study #6 (space)

Orchestral Study #7 (dialogue)

Orchestral Study #8 (toccata)

Orchestral Study #9 (seven interludes)

Orchestral Study #10 (rupture, slowed down and from different angles)

Orchestral Study #11 (a crowd, disassembling)

Orchestral Study #12 (thesis)

My goal: open with a pulsing, harmonically spare section containing periodic dissonances that break the monotony. Twittering chaos in the winds interrupt and finally take over. Close with a celestial echo.

The pulsing section was the initial germ and what I started with, yet I struggled figuring it out and didn’t get it right until the other two were almost fully developed. It was more frustrating than expected and a very dispiriting start. The three voices in the wind section are inspired by some of Elliott Carter’s pieces where each voice is a separate monologue, almost without awareness of the others. In my head I had initially heard music with a complete lack of regular beat but ultimately was not able to realize that texture. The idea for the celestial section came as I was finishing the winds. I heard the initial motif and the cascade texture followed naturally. The overlapping transitions were developed after each section was nearly complete.

The pulsing section is maybe a little too repetitive; the twittering has voice crossing that may-or-may-not work; the celestial echo gets too dense and I could have maybe used fewer voices.

Need to work more on combining instruments and notating dynamics.

orchestral-study-2

Orchestral Study #1 (flowing and hymn-like)

Orchestral Study #2 (driving and chaotic)

Orchestral Study #3 (adagio with melisma)

Orchestral Study #4 (allegro)

Orchestral Study #5 (variations)

Orchestral Study #6 (space)

Orchestral Study #7 (dialogue)

Orchestral Study #8 (toccata)

Orchestral Study #9 (seven interludes)

Orchestral Study #10 (rupture, slowed down and from different angles)

Orchestral Study #11 (a crowd, disassembling)

Orchestral Study #12 (thesis)

A year or so ago I decided to start studying orchestration in order to continue composing, even if no longer able to perform on piano. I had acquired a used copy of Walter Piston’s Orchestration book somewhere. It’s bound with an imprint of Allerton High School–England–on the cover. A note pasted on the first page: Frank Snape Music Prize, Marilyn Smith,1960-16, J. J. Morton (?) Head Mistress.

Anyway, cut to a month ago when one of the classical stations I listen to on the way to work was playing a Haydn symphony. Thinking of the 100-plus that he had written, I decided to try to write a piece for orchestra every month this year. Learn by doing, etc. Although I will commit the offense of not fully allowing the pieces to develop their themes and structures, I will benefit from frequent fresh starts, and will be able to grow out of the previous works’ mistakes. I had this idea on January 15th so I’m on target for 30-day composing sessions, but behind for the year. It’s a soft target.

I started unsure what my orchestral style would be. Rock musicians turned orchestral generally produce tonal works similar to their songs but without any of the edge that electric guitar, studio processing, etc. adds to the music. I didn’t want to fall into that. Inspirations are the Russians: Shostakovich and Prokofiev, the sonorists: Schnittke and Penderecki (5th Symphony), and works like Sibelius’s 5th Symphony (for its discursive fluidity) or Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony.

In this first study, I started with the general intent of opening with a section of chattery, fluid strings, then leading to a more homophonic section dominated by brass, and developing off of those. The result is 5 sections and a coda, generally:

Polyphonic theme A for string
Homophonic hymn-like theme B for brass
Theme C derived from the texture of theme A, progressing with more dissonant brass
Theme B in the string section while the brass references theme C
Theme A and C interwoven, closing with coda referencing the simplified texture of theme B for brass and strings

At 3:12, it does feel a bit rushed as if it’s 30 minutes in a 3 minute span, but I feel like it did achieve what I set out to express. (Musescore used for scoring and PDF/MP3 output.)

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