Composing Phrase by Phrase 14

Expanding the Second Section

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Composing Phrase by Phrase, the blog where I write my thoughts that went into the process of composing a new piece, one phrase at a time. Last week's post went over a transitional phrase that brought us from the first theme group to a new theme. Let's recap the target theme real quick.

Theme 2

The second theme is in B-flat major played in octaves by the cello and viola. The two violins harmonize together, mostly in thirds, and provides some fills in the melody's rests. A brief call and response between the violins and the viola/cello pair adds a bit of light contrast before the melody returns once more, this time played by the violins.

In the draft of this theme cadenced in B-flat. That doesn't leave much room for forward movement, though. A single phrase won't sufficiently balance the section I've already written, so I want to find a way to keep things open. When I wrote about modulations last week, I mostly focused on how to modulate smoothly to help the listener feel the new key still belonged in the same composition as what came before, as opposed to randomly plopping into a new key space without preparation.

Buuuuuut... Sometimes it's effective to just randomly plop the listener into a new key space without preparation. That's what I do going into the next phrase.

mms. 83-84

In this instance, I do two things to help make the sudden modulation successful. Firstly, I use a deceptive cadence for the modulation. The listener is expecting the melody to arrive at a B-flat, but I give them a B-natural, instead. That alteration is harmonized with the target key of G major.

Second, instead of doing a full cadence, I use an elision. Simply put: an elision is when the end of a phrase and the beginning of a new phrase happen at the same time. Where the violins and cello cadence with a familiar motive, the viola continues on unabated with its own melody. Speaking of, here's the rest of the phrase:

Phrase 14, mms. 83-92

This melody is a new variant built from the third measure of the second theme.

m.72 (bottom) and m.84 (top) comparison

Even though the motive itself is very simple, its presentation in new contexts every time prevents it from going stale. In fact, I'd wager only musically trained ears would connect the dots on a first listen.

The rest of the melody at measure 84 is built from a slightly modified version of the motive presented in sequence. The rising sequence creates a tension that suddenly drops with a quickly descending scale.

mms.84-87 sequence and scale

There are two layers of accompaniment for the melody. One layer is a light harmonization by the second violin and then the first violin. This harmonization is beneath the viola's high melodic placement, helping the viola melody stand out. The other layer is the cello's bass line. This line makes use of a different motive, the octave leap in a dotted-eight+sixteenth+eighth pattern. A rising scale brings the cello to the foreground as the viola drops away.

This scheme is repeated when the cello picks up the same melody, with only a few alterations. The viola takes the role of the bass. The violins maintain the role of harmonizing. The biggest difference is the chord the sequence is presented within. When the viola plays, the progression is G, D, C, A7.

mms.84-87 progression

That progression keeps the door open for the cello's entrance. The second time the melody is stated, the chords are D, E minor, A7, and D7.

One observation I have about my harmony is my rather haphazard use of extended triads. Sometimes, seventh chords show up and are used functionally. That is to say, they direct the ear towards a specific chord out of all the possible chords. Other times, they show up only for a little bit of color, like this moment in measure 86.

m.86 Cmaj7

I'm going to make this a minor point of critique for future pieces. I think the loose approach to harmony and extended triads works ok in this piece, but that loose approach to harmony is more coincidental than intentional. At some point I want to do a blog series on harmony. Maybe a mini-project showing off different ways of harmonizing the same melody? Or different melodies over the same harmony? Both? Probably both.

Moving on. There's one more thing I'd like to discuss about how the melody in this phrase is constructed. It has to do with the melodic arc and why the motive has this very slight alteration to it. When comes to making a sequence, the most typical approach is to move the motive up or down one step at a time. If I did that, the melody might look something like this:

melody with alternate sequence, descending

Or something like this:

melody with alt. sequence, ascending

Here, I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. The first note of each part of the sequence is descending:

melody, first note

But the tail of the motive is ascending. Here's the ascending line highlighted for clarity.

motivic tail with highlights

The alteration to the motive allows for this diverging movement. Here's a different possibility where the motive is merely inverted (turned "upside down")

sequence with alt. motive

Again, the natural movement is only ascending. But now it's more clear what the motivic alteration actually is. It begins with an inversion of the first two notes of the motive, then is followed by the unaltered shape of the next two notes, and the last note is stretched a little bit. The inversion of only part of the motive allows for the generally ascending movement. The little stretch at the end allows the motive to connect to the descending line.

If I recall, I've heard this kind of thing called "implied polyphony," where a melody is constructed in a way to give the impression of two or more voices happening within a single voice. To make this clear, here's the same melody split between two instruments:

implied polyphony turned into actual polyphony

Alright, I think that's enough for today. If you enjoyed reading, consider subscribing the blog to our RSS feed! If you really enjoyed it, then consider signing up to my Patreon. Subscribers get access to audio of the phrases from ths blog, as well as scores and videos of compositions that don't make it to the blog. Either way, I hope you learned something! Thanks for stopping by!