Monday, January 30, 2017

Rondo in C Minor


This goes back to 2014, when I got this little idea in 17/8 but set it aside, because I thought the A and B sections of the rondo form were too short. When browsing through scores last weekend, I came across it and realized that these two sections were actually just parts of an overall A section, itself having a form of AAB (the second 'A' a transposition of the first). I came up with a B section (itself AABC, with a similarly transposed repeated A and the B echoing the 'A' part of the slightly shorter overall A section).

The overall structure became AABABA-coda (with no strict repeats, as each occurrence of a section has the left hand do something a little different), the final A blending into the coda.  A brief cadenza-like passage leads to what is here the second of three versions of the ending (longer than the first version but a little shorter than the third).

Originally written out in 17/8, I decided to break it down in order to better show the subdivisions (mostly 4-4-4-5 and 5-5-4-3), and because in the coda there are some 13s, 10s, etc., along with a couple more 17s.  Apart from the rhythmic oddities, however, this is very traditional.