Orchestral Study #8 (toccata) – An Echo That's Reversing

My focus for this piece was to start scoring percussion.

The music has some instances of #6 (mildly dissonant, held clusters) and some of #2 and #4 (fringe-tonal counterpoint with imitation across voices). I’m getting my footing with having a consistent orchestral style though still learning and experimenting.

Prelude with dissonance (A1)
Rapid polyphony with increasing complexity in the percussion, using timpani, snare, and cymbal (B, C, and D1)
Return to A in style, with gradual reentry of polyphony from previous sections as an extended bridge (A2)
Chord progression and arpeggiated melody from D1 with written repeats (D2)
Short coda with percussion (E)

Once I got the first notes down for the polyphony and percussion, I was surprised how easily those new elements flowed. I had to reference Piston for the limitations of the timpani and the range it can handle, but snare and cymbal pretty much explain themselves. Like the allegro in #4 this was kindof exhausting; there was an inner conflict of how easily it flowed and just how much music I could manage in this style. And, even though I feel it’s relatively complete, the month puts pressure on how much to put in. I’m beginning to think, after these 12 are finished, of the limitations I’ll encounter writing longer, 20+ minute pieces.

Next will likely be a spare, arrhythmic study with further exploration of articulation in the strings. Before that I will go back to #5 to fix a section that I just, just hate.

orchestral-study-8

Updated 26 Aug 2019

Piston showed the timpani with trills but the playback from Musescore sounded awful so I switched to tremolo. Much better. I also exported the score in four parts (woodwinds, brass, percussion, strings) as wav files and mixed them in Audacity with some reverb and stereo separation.