Composing Phrase by Phrase 5
How to Draw an Owl
Hello and welcome or welcome back to my Composing Phrase by Phrase blog series! We're chugging right along, finished up phrase 4 last week. This week, I'm going to quickly touch on phrase 5 and take a turn towards the future incarnation of this piece.
Honestly, there's not a lot about phrase 5 I haven't already said about phrase 2. I'm looking for an idea that is complimentary to phrase 4. That is to say, it has some contrast with the phrase before it, but not a lot. Here's the phrase I came up with:
phrase 5
The most obvious new thing about this phrase is how its consequent is the same as phrase 4's. The antecedent is different is all. This is a marked difference from the first section, whose endings only contain similarities instead of repetitions.
Other than that, about the only thing I want to point out about this phrase is how its beginning recalls material from the first section, specifically measure 9. While it's not a precise repetition, the use of something familiar in this section helps ground the listener in the idea of "Yes, these two parts belong together." That can be a challenge when minuet/trio forms get much longer. With smaller works, it's not so necessary.
phrase 2 and 5 comparison
Oddly, I've struggled with ways of expanding this phrase without disrupting the balance of the section. I think it's because in the small format I have right now, hearing phrase 4 in its entirety again, even with an intervening complimentary phrase, is somehow too much. It's not unheard of for trio sections to be shorter than the "minuet" section, sometimes significantly so. As a cellist, the gavottes from J.S. Bach's 5th cello suite comes to mind.
Moving on!
What comes next? We're going from five phrases to six, technically. There's a bit of a problem, though. I could keep adding complimentary phrases... eventually, that's going to get old. Complimentary phrases merely add a little spice at a point where the ear wants something new. The big way around that is to write contrasting phrases. Difficulty is, the more an idea's elements contrast with what comes before it, the more you need to work on transitioning the material from one point to the next.
There's also the question, "Can the idea itself support a longer form?" Right now, the answer is "No." Take a look at the first section again:
First section (not revised)
Even though there's metrical diversity, there's very little rhythmic diversity (almost none, really). The idea has a very narrow range and contains a fair bit of motivic repetition within itself. There's also no breathing room. The tune is singable, sure, it just requires fast lungs. Keep on going on like that and you get musical hyperventilation (maybe desireable for effect, just make sure you plan for it).
It's worth taking a look at why the idea has the traits it has. For one thing, it started from a place a pedagogy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with writing works aimed at students and amateurs, and in fact I wish more composers would do so. It does add constraints to your idea making that maybe aren't suitable for long form compositions.
For another, it's written for unaccompanied cello/string-instrument-of-choice. String instruments, among other things, do not require the player to breathe beyond what's necessary to stay alive. The fact it is unaccompanied, too, means the instrument has to fill many roles all at once: melody, harmony, rhythmic interest. In this tune, as in much fiddle music or Bach's aforementioned cello suites, the composition fills all these roles by having the instrument fill almost every inch of compositional space. There are other solutions to this problem, they're just not the default.
So what do? The first step is to take the music ideas I have and start to blow them up. Uh, like a balloon, not an explosive. First off, I'm going to move away from unaccompanied string instrument to string quartet. This takes the pressure off the one instrument to do it all, girlboss style, and spreads the musical roles across several. It also immediately expands the possibility of many musical elements: texture, density, and range being the biggest change.
Second, I'm going to take the basic motives I have and just literally add space between them. Like this:
phrase 1 with rests
Then, I'm going to fill in the rest of the owl a little bit. Like this:
How to Draw an Owl
Er, I mean, like this:
phrase 1, revision 1
There are a lot of things to go over, here. Before getting into nitty-gritty-kitty-litter, some structural stuff first. For the antecedent, we've got violins playing chunks from the first phrase of the original idea, with a few changes here and there which I'll explain next week. Then, the viola (inner voices, unite!) picks up the consequent with a new idea - a repeated A with a bit of Bb added as spice. To help overlap these two chunks, I've extended the ending of the violin's idea just a little bit with a new rhythmic feature, a dotted-eighth+sixteenth-note+eighth note rhythm. These kind of "phrase joinings" help shift the listener's ear from one part of the ensemble to another without creating a disruptive break in the musical flow.
Phrase Joinings
In this case, the Bb is also added for a specific reason. For the finished work, I'm going to keep the contrasting material I wrote for phrase 4 and 5 in Bb-major. Putting the Bb in, even just a dash of it, from the beginning will help tie the future section together with this beginning. It's easy to belabor this kind of thing, so I'm not going to hammer on the foreshadowing.
As far as the musical density goes, I'm keeping things fairly light at the beginning to give plenty of head room for dynamic changes later. Violin 2 harmonizes the melody in violin 1; when the viola enters with its motive, it is only sparsely accompanied by pizzicato in the cello and violins. The aim is a sort of buoyant feel to everything which I'm reinforcing with staccatto markings (read: space between played notes) and accents on weak and off-beats.
Ok, that's a big shift! Some of the concepts I'm bringing up, like musical density, will make more sense as I present more of the composition. I think that's fodder for a completely different blog series, though. In the mean time, if you enjoyed reading, consider subscribing to the blog to keep up with future updates! And if you really enjoyed reading, maybe support me on Patreon? Supporters get access to recordings of the work in progress, as well as other compositions and scores.
Either way, thanks for reading!
