materials of composition.
piano reduction - concerto for orchestra
The first assignment for the class was to arrange a orchestral piece into two pianos. I chose to do bars 95-133 of the first movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. I originally planned that the first piano would have the winds, while the second had the strings, and though I kind of stuck to that formula, I did alter it quite a bit so that it was more pleasing to look at. I chose this part because of the climax at 122, which is so good in it's original form. Sadly, it falls a bit flat on piano, but oh well.
string 4tet - what a great day (to be a raven)
Written as a study of extended string techniques, What a Great Day (to be a raven) is a fun little jaunt about a raven who wanders around and sees the world or something. It isn't programatic music, but I remember listening back to it and thinking of a raven hopping up and down. Could you tell that I love the chord progression IV - iv - i - II? Because that's the majority of the piece, with the main "motif" being the C sharp to C natural. Also I tried my hardest to not make the cello part boring as hell, which was the main critiscm when I first did a string 4tet. And when I did a second string 4tet. And also a lot of other times. Sorry every cello player I worked with before WAAPA.
(Also thank you Anneke van der Laan (a cello player who's life I haven't ruined yet) for double checking my work and giving it a string player's seal of approval!)
(Also thank you Anneke van der Laan (a cello player who's life I haven't ruined yet) for double checking my work and giving it a string player's seal of approval!)
piano orchestration - prelude no. 2 (feuilles mortes)
One thing I love to do is arrange. I often do arranging when I'm in a creative rut, and it often gets me back into the mindset of music making. However, this task was not "arrange a piano piece for orchestra", but to "orchestrate a piano piece for orchestra", which are different. Still, limitations breed creativity, and this orchestration was fairly creative, at least I think so.
The piece is called Feuilles Mortes, which is the second movement of Debussy's Preludes No. 2. The original piano work is very fluid with it's tempo (example by Krystian Zimerman, from which I referenced my orchestration), so posing it to an orchestra while not chaning too much in terms of expression text was a challenge, but not a hard one. The problem of could the performers blow for that long came up once or twice, but it was always answered with if it is ever played, it wouldn't be with a school band.
I tried not to add too much. There's a couple places where the notes were so low it was impossible for anything else to play it, so I rose that up an octave, and I added a bass drum to accentuate the timpani, and suspended cymbals to swell from one section to another. I didn't use too much strings (unlike most Debussy orchestrations), but mainly because I heard more wind sounds coming from the piece than strings.
The piece is called Feuilles Mortes, which is the second movement of Debussy's Preludes No. 2. The original piano work is very fluid with it's tempo (example by Krystian Zimerman, from which I referenced my orchestration), so posing it to an orchestra while not chaning too much in terms of expression text was a challenge, but not a hard one. The problem of could the performers blow for that long came up once or twice, but it was always answered with if it is ever played, it wouldn't be with a school band.
I tried not to add too much. There's a couple places where the notes were so low it was impossible for anything else to play it, so I rose that up an octave, and I added a bass drum to accentuate the timpani, and suspended cymbals to swell from one section to another. I didn't use too much strings (unlike most Debussy orchestrations), but mainly because I heard more wind sounds coming from the piece than strings.
original work - jonathan (don't eat the laundry detergent)
Throughout this semester, most of my musical output was all wishy-washy pretty music, which is fun to write, but isn't the most fun to write (at least in my opinion). I, for one, absolutely adore unnecessarily rhythmically complex music, both listening and writing. Thus, Jonathan (don't eat the laundry detergent) was created, but not after 4 other tries of trying to do the same calm, gentle, ghibli-esque music i normally write. This kinda just melted out of me like the cheese off to the side of a cheese toastie. I didn't really have any idea of what it meant artistically, and the name really just came after I was calling my girlfriend and I asked her to title the piece out of nowhere without listening to it, which she replied "Jonathan". I added the subtitle so it didn't seem like a dedication to a dude named "Jonathan".