Sunday, November 18, 2012

Another Sketch

This one is in F Minor, for organ. Now, as mentioned way back regarding my Untitled Prelude, I am rather limited in terms of organ sounds on my current setup. Until I can get a more adjustable organ sound I'm stuck with this fairly thick and heavy sound, which precludes very intricate organ writing. Thus, the fugal section that tried to bubble up in the middle of this had to be abandoned, which is just as well in this case, as it would've turned into a more involved piece than this quick little sketch.

Even though this took about a day longer to write than the previous sketch for piano (much of this time actually spent "unwriting", as indicated above), it's about half a minute shorter; it is neither light nor relaxing, so I figured that listeners should be subjected to no more than two minutes of this... (you're welcome!)


Hopefully, I can now get back to the seven (or possibly eight, as I may return to the one for clarinet and strings) "real" pieces on my current active list; there is a general idea for some other new thing that may make it to paper soon, but I'll try to finish one of the Perenepsis pieces and at least one more of the quartet movements before getting sidetracked again.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Sketch in E-Flat Major (Overtones)

While being in a position to possibly finish the previously threatened Perenepsis #5 before #4, something else popped into my head two days ago and is already done. It's just a quick little thing, based on the harmonic series (hence the title), but I kind of like it. In contrast to the Perenepsis pieces, this is blatantly tonal -- E-flat major, chosen in order to render it more calm than bright -- with very few accidentals.

There is some interesting (to me, at least) stuff going on structurally beneath the "severely tonal" harmonic language. Overall, the form is ABA, with the B section (in 3/4) itself an ABA form, and the 4/4 A section breaks into ABC, and then CBA on the return. Breaking it down further, the 'A' part of the overall A is itself AABB, and BBAA in the repeat (and a slight overlap in the B's), with a V-I cadence sandwiched between the very last A's of the A part of the overall A section. Also, the 'A' of the overall B section is related to the 'B' of the overall A, the swapping of the left and right hand parts in the latter being a larger-scale version of the alternations in the former. I hope I can follow this a few months from now when I read it...

Mainly, though, it's just a nice, relaxing little thing that is considerably easier to play than my other recent works. My favorite part is the very last note; raising the G in the final chord by an octave really did something nice there: