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Hi. I was measuring my glasses earlier and discovered that I happen to have a 750ml glass
in my collection. As luck would have it, I also happen to have precisely that much merlot. A coincidence
such as this simply can't be ignored. Let's see if we can get through this before I'm
finished reading off my program notes for the episode. We're calling it an experiment.
So here goes.
The things I do for you guys.
This week's challenge comes from washingtoncomposersforum.org. The posting on the website reads:
Washington Composers Forum announce a call for scores for performance on such-and-such-a-date.
Pieces should be under ten minutes, scored for saxophone quartet. The winning composer
will receive a performance of the piece and a recording of the performance. The call is
open to the general public. Composers may submit multiple scores for saxophone quartet.
The performers will adjudicate the call, and may choose not to perform any of the submissions.
Submissions must be received by such-and-such-a-date, et cetera, et cetera.
The call for submissions doesn't specify the particular instrumentation of the saxophone
quartet in question. There is a low-resolution picture on the quartet's website from a bit
of an awkward angle, and based on what's visible -- mostly the playing position of their right
hands -- it looks like they're holding a soprano, alto, tenor and bari sax. It's hard to tell,
though, since their instruments are partly obscured by their music stands, but since
it's a professional ensemble I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that at least some of them
will be willing to double on enough instruments to play whatever reasonable instrumentation
a composer might throw their way. That seems likely, right?
I considered an approach whereby I'd write out a conventional melody, then abstract it
into oblivion and finally arrange that for a quartet, but then I remembered a sketch
I had made for a project that I worked on earlier. I set it aside at the time because
it didn't fit my goals for that project, but I think it works better in this context. Keeping
a notebook of old ideas is handy for things like that sometimes. Now this motive becomes
this and I've got a head start on the work of abstracting a phrase.
That becomes this, which I think succeeds in its own way in making a formal statement
while avoiding any cliche that I can think of. Look at how the modally borrowed submediant
helps support the tension through the period's elongated consequent. It turns out that digressing
into distantly related regions where dimminution of the harmonic rhythm fits comfortably instead
of waiting for a cadence makes the modulation at the end of the phrase feel rather tame
in contrast and masks its impact.
That brings me to the compositional puzzle of the transition. This sort of connundrum
pops up constantly and a lot of the literature that I've read neglects to cover it in the
kind of detail that I'd sometimes like to see, so let's take a moment and think about
it. I have this idea and
I have this idea, but they don't go together. Now I could just smack them together, one
directly after the other without any further preparation. Here's what that sounds like.
Now that's ok in some ways, but I think I can do better. What I need here is a transition,
a graceful way to get from one to the other. Here's what I'm looking for out of such a
transition: I need to modulate, that is, get from the first key signature to the other,
from one tonal region to the next. I need to preserve the integrity of the voice leading
and make sure that each instrument is playing a continuous line that makes sense. I also
need to adjust the texture to make sure that the gap between the one variety of counterpoint
and the other sounds logical and not disjointed. I want to find elegant solutions to each of
those requirements and I don't want to spend too many bars accomplishing it because I don't
want to put the focus on the transition, but rather on the two adjoining thematic statements
which it serves.
By the time I'm ready to join these two ideas up, I have something that's beginning to look
like a cadential figure at the end of the first theme and a thin texture establishing
the motive at the beginning of the second. That gives me a bit of room to play with in
between.
I prolong the tonic at the end of the cadential figure as a pedal point that overlaps the
second theme a bit to reinforce the harmonic continuity. I have a destablizing ornamental
motive that I like at the end of the the second theme that I'll borrow over here to signal
the modulation. That's this bit. Given the idiomatic gestural vocabulary that I've already
established, it helps prepare the ear to slide out of the existing harmonic region without
contrasting too much with the tonic in the pedal point underneath. Here's how it sounds
now.
Since the second theme doesn't actually ever confirm its own tonic, I'm going to exercise
some artistic license and refuse to state it at the beginning of the theme here as well.
That will give me a nice structural elision which effectually denies the listener any
cut and dry reference to a clear harmonic relationship with the original key moving
into the second theme. Look at the harmonic arc that I'm drawing as the exposition unfolds,
and that's the big picture that I'm keeping in mind throughout the journey from one theme
into the next, and really between the two of them.
Next up, the voice leading gets filled in with a static figure that reflects as soon
as possible the textural characteristics of the second theme and the top voice starts
to move into position.
Halfway through my first complete phrase the texture shifts to reflect an active harmony
so I'm now going to take that and decide that it's a B' section. As it is, my form now reads
ABAC, oh wait, A, B'A', C. I'm not ready to consider the B' its own section yet because
it's clearly not capable of standing on its own in its current incarnation. All it does
is resolve from A to A', so before I feel comfortable calling it B by itself, it's going
to have to walk on its own two legs. The form that I end up with puts the fully crystalized
B section quite near the end and only makes reference to it on the way there. So we get
a AB'A'CA... So we get AB'CA... So we get AB'A'C... So we get ABACABCA, which is a pretty
typical rondo form, pretty much.
My challenge for you, then, is to write a saxophone quartet. Sound off in the comments
and I'll see you next time. Until then, bye.
This is YouTube, so I think I should try to cook something now, right?