Composing Phrase by Phrase 21

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Na na na na na na na na

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Composing Phrase by Phrase! Believe it or not, we're nearing the end of this composition. Just a few phrases left to go. Last week, I finished the transition back to D major from B-flat major, which brings us to a return of the primary theme. I've already posted the planned arrive a while back and I've not seen much reason to change what I had come up with. I'll post it here again as a refresher.

mms. 163-185

Moving on! At the moment, the cadence appears to be setting us up for another cadence in D major. But the piece isn't done yet! We can't have that. Here's the next phrase.

mms. 186-193

That rug? It's been pulled. It's not a huge rug pull. It is a deceptive cadence, nonetheless. A classical deceptive cadence would give us a B minor chord, but it's been a long time since that was a requirement. Instead, we get a B major chord. The cello part takes up the bass. Following it along, we get B to E, the F to B-flat. It's not quite a circle of fifths. Has a similar feel to it, though.

mms. 186-189, cello

The viola tracks along the cello with chord fills. It's line follows an ascending scale that has something of an octatonic flavor to it (F#, G, A, B-flat). It also pops up from time to time to form another line traing a chromatic scale (D-sharp, E, F, F-sharp).

mms. 186-189, viola

Taken with the cello part, this creates an interesting situation where the viola is not following a clear ly patterned role in the chord voicings. It starts as the fifth of the chord (B major), the the third (E minor) and the third again (F major) then the octave (B-flat major). To help add another layer of spice, the viola also hangs onto the tone from the previous measure to create a little bit of dissonance against the cello. Since the line resolves from a more dissonant interval to a more consonant one, this would be called a retardation.

mms. 186-189, viola retardations

The violins play the melodic element. They alternate a two-measure fragment in a call and response set up.

mms. 186-189, violins

The fragment is a little bit gnarly to describe in words. It starts with the second violin playing an arpeggio up the B-major chord of the bar. It then overshoots the target note, B, before returning to it. The line the does a little curlicue kind of thing down to its next target, E. From here, the line sort of repeats itself. The arpeggio is replaced with a bigger leap, which then tracks down a scale again towards its final destination, F.

mms. 186-187, violin 2

The first violin sits out a little bit. It has a short line leading it from the background into the foreground. It then follows the same plan, with different chords. The first is actually a D minor chord in first inversion (the chord's third in the bass) followed by a... F-sharp major chord in first inversion? I think? It's a touch ambiguous. You could also read it as an augmented B-flat major chord. Actually, now I write it out, that's probably the better analysis.

mms. 188-189, violin 1

Hopping back over to the cello, the bass of the next four measures alternates between an F-sharp and a C, forming a tritone progression. It finishes with a chromatic scale that's displaced by big leaps of ninths and sevenths. This leads the ear into the next chunk of the composition. We'll get to that next week.

mms. 190-193, cello

The viola continues its ascent against this repeated bass. This time, its line follows a whole-tone scale, rather than an octatonic one. The implied counterpoint part of the line ascends in parallel right up to the end where it launches back down a series of leaps of a fifth before coming right back up the other direction with an arpeggio plus scale lead in.

mms. 190-193, viola

The two violins continue their call and response, although it is compressed down to a one measure fragment being passed back and forth. Their melodic fragments follow the same line as before: arpeggio overshooting its target, stepping back, then a little wrinkle that leads back to its final goal. At measure 193, the violins join together with the rest of the ensemble for their push into the next section.

mms. 190-193, violins

There's not much to say about this rhythmically. Everybody's pretty much chugging away at eighth-notes. There's a few hemiolas here and there brought about by changing the placement of slurs in the melodic fragment and by displaced octaves in the bass. It's otherwise fairly straightforward. One thing I will bring up is the use of slurs to create metric emphasis. Without them, the passage would quickly grow rhythmically stale.