Shepherd's Call

This piece was actually completed a couple weeks before Perenepsis #2 (after being almost finished for quite some time before that), but I expect that Perenepsis #3 will be the next one to be completed, and wanted a buffer between the two, so here it is. Unlike Antioch, this isn't a piano piece adapted for oboe and piano, although it did start with just the three opening chords. The third chord required a resolution, and then this sequence called for a response. At this point, I wanted a bagpipe call over the held chord, but without an available bagpipe sample, I settled for an oboe and proceeded from there. The progress from initial idea to "near completion" was very quick, but a couple of bars near the end kept bothering me for months. There's something hidden in the right hand of the piano part starting at 0:36, but I don't think I'll say what it is. For now, just be happy to have a break between Perenepses #2 and #3 (since I made up the word, I get to decide how to pluralize it).

Xiv (Perenepsis #2)

The Xiv is one of the lesser-known mythical creatures, at least here in the US, having its origins in medieval Croatia. It was generally depicted as having the head and upper body of a bird of prey, sometimes with wings and other times with arms (but never both). The lower half was basically humanoid, but unlike most mythical beasts of that time, the Xiv wore pants -- and smoked a pipe (the version with arms, not the winged one).

Now, I would've provided an artist's rendering of this beast, except that all of the preceding is of course total nonsense. This is just the 14th item in a notebook of piano pieces, some with titles, most with nothing beyond a Roman numeral -- Untitled Prelude is I, II is its still unfinished companion piece, IV became Nocturne for String Quartet, V became Antioch, VI is Nota Brevis, VIII is Scherzo #2 (Perenepsis #1), XIII is another Perenepsis that I might get back to at some point, etc.

What is Perenepsis? First of all, it's a word that I made up because I didn't know what else to call this type of composition (so far, limited to piano pieces). It is also the approach used in creating these compositions. I've decided to call my Scherzo #2 (VIII) the first of these, although several earlier pieces (Allegro in C, Collisions, Anachronistic Rabbits, the piano-only version of Antioch, and a few non-posted/unfinished ones) share many of the distinguishing characteristics and similar approach to the compositional process.

What are the characteristics? More percussive than lyrical, a good bit of dissonance (not exactly atonal, but not clearly major or minor, generally employing quartal harmonies), irregular or shifting meter, tempo changes brought about by stressing different note lengths rather than by changing the beats per minute, switching parts between the hands, frequent use of inversion and reversal of motifs, mixture of contrapuntal and chordal textures... that pretty much covers it. There's also a different approach to the compositional process, but that's harder to describe, and besides, if I just blurted that out, then anyone could do it!

This one is in 2/4 -- no weird or changing time signatures (just wait for #3, though!), but accents and stresses create the impression of shifting between 2/4 and 3/8 in places; it's more or less in G minor/major/phrygian/locrian, shifts a few times between using mainly eighth/sixteenth notes and quarters/eighths, has a brief fugal section right in the middle based on an accelerated version of a subject given 20 bars earlier, and a few other fun things, although this isn't the kind of piece you're going to go around humming afterwards. It's also semiautobiographical (although I may have been misquoted in places) -- this is what it sounds like inside my head; not all the time, of course, but often enough:

Updated Update -- 6/6/12, re-updated 6/23

Just in case anyone's reading this (or, more likely, as a reminder to myself), here's what's been going on.

As stated in earlier edits of this update, the structure of Perenepsis #3 is already completed, only working out details at this point. Also in piano-land, I'm still about halfway done with another fugue, a three-voice one in D minor.

Chamber works: I have a piece for clarinet and string trio that I suspect will go quickly once I get past its current roadblock (roadblock has been removed, but work on other pieces has stalled this one); it's in 5/4, but ambiguously so, and contains some Gregorian Chant in an inner voice (as does newly posted Shepherd's Call). I've also made progress on two more movements of my String Quartet #3, one movement of which is already posted as my Little Fugue; both of these are uptempo movements, one in 5/8, and the other played entirely in pizzicato.They're fun little tunes. When you listen to Haydn as much as I do, some of it is bound to rub off, and this has led to a piece in the style of my musical hero; I work on this one occasionally, generally not right after listening to any Haydn, as I don't want to actually copy him (and I've been listening to a lot of Haydn lately, especially his quartets, so have left this alone for now). Finally, I also found another piece for string quartet that was "hiding" behind a non-quartet sounding title (Above and Below), and have resumed work on that one, too. And finally, yep... found yet another idea from a couple years ago, this one for brass quintet.

Orchestral: I've got four five pieces going here, all much more substantial than Bells. One is the remnant of my long-ago abandoned Frankenstein opera -- I liked the idea for it, but faced three major obstacles: 1. I haven't done any vocal writing to speak of; 2. it would be difficult to put together an actual production even if I did finish it, and 3. I really just don't like opera very much. So, what would have been the overture, along with additional themes from my sketches, are going into a sort of symphonic poem that is about halfway done, as far as I can tell at this point. This is fun stuff. My second one, Testimony, has a similarly eerie atmosphere to the Frankenstein thingie, but is more a set of variations for orchestra. And then there's one that is also solemn but I think not quite as eerie, and I'm thinking it may be one movement of an actual full symphony. I also found some initial scribblings of another piece (also hiding behind a misleading title) that I may work on along with everything else. One more orchestral idea has made it from between the ears to a few scribbled notes on graph paper (didn't have any manuscript paper handy when it hit me).

This isn't everything -- there's the companion piece for my Untitled Prelude, a not-quite-a-fugue piano piece in C, several old odds and ends for piano, a salsa instrumental, a Celtic tune, a difficult categorize thing for a motley ensemble called Prof. Murgatroyd's Excursion Among the Ruins of Zurm (the name of the piece, not the ensemble), an idea in 7/8 for which I haven't yet determined the instrumentation, and a few ideas still just fermenting upstairs -- but that's what I'm working on now.

The bulk of my attention since the June postings has gone to a couple of the string quartet pieces, the brass thing, the salsa, and a sonata for viola and piano -- oops, that one's not on the above list, is it? Of course, by the time anyone reads this my priorities will probably have shifted again...

Merry Christmas!

Here's a little piece that I've worked on at the piano for several years around this time of year without getting very far on it. I recently realized why that was -- it wasn't meant to be a piano piece! It's just a happy and relaxing little tune that makes me think of Christmas, dressed up in some instrumentation that hopefully makes it more interesting than my previous messing about with it on the piano. For now, it's called "Bells":

Anachronistic Rabbits

Not only anachronistic, after an initial well-behaved cadence landing squarely on G Major, these rabbits become somewhat anarchical as well. Being rabbits, however, they eventually settle back down:

A Little Fugue for String Quartet

Here's a funny little thing -- I started writing my String Quartet #3 (I might eventually post my second quartet, but I can't find the first; not even enough of my notes to re-create it), and it went and turned itself into a fugue! The four-bar subject, which supplies the material for everything that follows, consists of an unwinding chromatic idea (along the lines of a couple of orchestral pieces I'm still working on) followed by consecutive fourths and then a falling pattern. If the ending seems a little strange, that's because it's actually a transition into the second movement of the quartet. Given the number of pieces I'm currently working on, it may be a while before the remaining movements are completed, so I thought this was interesting enough to post on its own for now:

Prelude in B Major

This little piece has been percolating upstairs for a little over a week, and on Easter morning it let me finish it. It's a tiny perpetual motion machine with a bad case of the stutters, sharing some characteristics with the C Major Allegro posted here and a fugue-like piece (also in C Major) that I need to find and finish, but in this case, the 16th-note motion, while it passes back and forth between the right and left hands, never stops until the end. It may be brief, but it's got as many notes as most pieces that are twice as long! I'm now planning to take the final progression of seven chords, transpose to a "flatter" key, and make something a bit calmer; this is my idea of recycling, but it won't be recognizable as coming from this.

Note: Listening to it now, I am vaguely reminded of a duet from some old opera, although that never occurred to me while writing this; I'll leave it up to listeners to figure out which one.