Composing Phrase by Phrase 24
Double Bars! Coda to the End
Hello and welcome or welcome back to Composing Phrase by Phrase, the blog where I compose a new work one phrase at a time and talk in detail about the choices I made and why. This week marks the last week of the first composition in this series! The whole thing will be posted as a score video on YouTube soon, so if you've been keeping up with this series from the beginning (thanks!) you'll get to hear the final result in not too long. Let's hop to it! What have we got?
mms. 222-end
A lot of notes, is what we've got! Don't worry, though. Like last week's entry, this part of the phrase includes a good bit of repetition to help glue this ending together. From measure 222 to measure 229, the main building block is a call and response approach between the first and second violins. They're trading off a pentatonic scale. The scale type used occurs commonly in Japanese music, but it can also be understood as a subset of the Phrygian mode.
Phrygian mode with pentatonic scale highlighted
Here's the figuration as it first appears in the composition.
mms. 222-223
And here it is passed back and forth between the two violins.
mms. 222-229, pentatonic call and response
There are two layers to the motif's accompaniment - the cello, providing the bass, and the viola paired with one of the violins. The cello's bass part is strongly percussive. It's chords and double stops establish A as the root of everything built above it. Rhythmically, it either emphasizes strong beats (for 5/8 bars) or works in hemiola against the motif's meter (in the 6/8 bars).
mms. 222-229, cello
Throughout, the viola provides rhythmic and harmonic glue to help stick everything together. This voice sticks entirely to A's and G's, using double stops to help give extra emphasis to the cello's chords and double stops below. The harmonic consistency helps keep things stable as a large unit. At measure 226, there's a slight break in this role where the viola adds a little extra harmonization to the pentatonic motif. This break is both to help keep the ear's interest in an otherwise relatively static phrase, but it's also used to prepare the slightly different texture played by the quartet in the next phrase segment.
mms. 222-225, viola
Speaking of texture, when each violin switches to the accompaniment role from the motif, they perform A's and E's in double stops. They also are instructed to perform a technique called jeté, the french word for "throw. The effect is a bouncy, skittering type of sound that sounds much more difficult to achieve than it is. I'm admittedly on the fence about this, it's something I'd have to hear live before I really commit to it. I just wanted to try adding in a little extra to the texture as an experiment. If I hear it live and don't like it, they'll just go back to eighth-notes.
mms. 222-229, violin accompaniments
Moving on, here's the next chunk of the Coda:
mms. 230-233
From measures 230 to 233, the pentatonic motif is compressed into a smaller motif that is less a pentatonic scale than just an arpeggiated chord. The first is an A7, the second is an Fmaj7. The G in the second chord can either be looked at as an add2, or it's some kind of non-chord tone, it doesn't particularly matter in this instance. Here's what they look like in the piece.
mms. 230-233, violins
Beneath the violin exhange, the viola provides a little bit of harmonic glue and contrast, starting with a B-flat and G and then an A and an F-natural. The B-flat clashes pretty hard against the prevailing A's that abound, a tension that releases during the change to the minor pentatonic scales. That release still keeps the door open for further harmonic progression, however, which helps establish the harmonic change in the next phrase.
mms. 230-233, viola
During all of this, the cello is play A and E double stops on a harmonic node. This particular harmonic has something of a bright, shrill quality to it and stands out not just because of the timbre's quality, but because the string harmonic timbre hasn't been used at all over the course of the whole composition.
Alright! We're into the last stretch!
mms. 234-end
Everybody at this point is playing in rhythmic (if not metric) unison, just pure eighth-notes chugging along at full speed. Building from the bass up: the cello starts on open G, emphasizing metric points with crunchy triple stops across the top three open strings; the viola adds a B-flat and an F-sharp against that, both notes clashing with the A's and G's below, respectively; the second violin adds more weight to that A and G; and the first violin reinforces the D and B-flat. Overall, the chord quality is G minor-ish? Gmin9add#7, which is a mouthful.
mms. 234-237
For brevity, the chord quality of the next two bars is an A7Flat9Add4, another chord that just rolls off the tongue. After that is, uh... hm. So, everything stays the same except the bottom note of the cello's bass and the two notes played by the first violin go up a half-step. I guess it's a poly-chord? That's not how I thought of it, I was just going by voice leading, but that's basically what I ended up with: an A7 and a Bmaj7 playing at the same time. It's maximum crunch, like opening a jar of peanut butter and finding, like, a giant peanut inside.
mms. 238-241, harmonies
We're all set up for a plane crash, at this moment. But then, right at the very last second, the cadence motif swoops in to save the day. The cello does a little cheeky tritone substitution, but it's otherwise a V-I progression. The last chord is a D major chord voiced with as many open strings as possible while reinforcing the D with octaves and unisons. The cello plays a snap pizzicato (or Bartok pizz) to give a little percussive pop at the end. It also has the effect of minimizing the bass note, really allowing the chord to exist as this high, bright sound.
There's also a phenomenon where percussive effects, especially snare drum or cymbal-like percussion, help highlight the upper harmonics of a chord. I don't quite remember where I came across this bit of info, so it could be entirely false, but hey. It's worth a shot. We don't have a snare or a cymbal, but a really low snap pizz in the cello gets as close as we can get.
mms. 242-end
And that's it! It's not a super long piece, all told. Clocks in between 3:45-4:00 minutes, depending on the tempo the ensemble takes (even less if they decide to go really fast), but it is, as I hope is clear from the 23 weeks of blog posts that went into this, rather involved. On the other hand, describing music with words inevitably spills more ink than the music itself.
If you've been on this journey with me from beginning to end, I thank you wholeheartedly! The next Composing Phrase by Phrase series will probably show off much shorter compositions. I'm planning on doing a series of little preludes for piano using dodecaphonic composition. It's mostly me figuring out stuff you can do with 12-tone writing, so it should be... interesting.
Hope you join me next time!
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Composing Phrase by Phrase 23
Coda Incoming...
Hello and welcome or welcome back to Composing Phrase by Phrase! We're nearing the very end of the first composition for this series. There's just two or three more phrases left to go. We're going to have a bit of a longer one this week, but only because there's a lot of repetition. Let's hop right in!
mms. 206-221
When we last left off in measure 205, the ensemble had built up to a big, climactic moment marked at triple-forte (fortississimo, for the very particular). The viola and the cello had a descending scale and they arrive at their target note, B-flat. The viola ends abruptly there while the cello continues with a break in the volume, a forte-piano marking a sudden drop in dynamic from very loud to fairly soft.
The cello then begins a repeated B-flat that is punctuated every now and then by B-flatM7 chords. Hooked slurs (a short flying spiccato at this speed, really) are used mostly to keep the bowing aligned for down bows on the chords, which are easier to perform, rather than being used as a distinct articulation. At this speed, only two notes of flying spiccato won't sound much different frorm separate spiccato bow strokes anyways.
mms. 206-213, cello
Rhythmically, I will admit this was all worked out intuitively. I didn't have a particular method or source from earlier in the piece. I suppose, if I were to revise it, I could go back to the "interruption" motifs and draw from those. I don't think it's quite necessary. Each interruption phrase was loosely conceived, regardless.
Looking at it again, I can see there's a bit of an additive process going on. In measure 207, the B-flat chord is played twice; in 208-209, three times; 211-212, four times. I wish I could say this was planned, but no. This is a Bob Ross style Happy Accident. Sometimes, you just got to trust the gut, especially when rhythm is involved.
The viola joins in at measure 210. It's part is in rhythmic unison with the cello, although it starts at an F to create a perfect fifth. It's chord punctuations are also an F major chord, rather than B-flat. Taken together, it would all technically be labelled a B-flatM7add9. Is that what the ear hears? Sure, I guess. It's more of a crunchy, percussive sound, though, and while the chord does reference the previous section in B-flat major, it's not serving any particular harmonic function.
mms. 210-213, viola and cello
From 214 to 221, we have four measures repeated twice, more or less. It starts with this little pentatonic figure in the cello. The figure is then passed to the second violin (inner voices, hype!) then back to the viola.
m.214, main motif
When the cello finishes its line, it changes to chords punctuating the meter of the passage. The B-flat from the previous part of the phrase has now resolved to an A, which is then going to set up our final approach to D at the end. Seat belt lights are now on, ding. To keep the overall density of the passage, the second violin pics up the chugging eighth note job from the cello. It progresses from the B-flat major chord to a D7-ish chord (-ish because the third is missing, but the 7th strongly implies the quality).
mms.214-217
The first violin enters at measure 218, which adds another layer of density to the passage. It confirms the D7's major quality with an F-sharp then progresses to an A minor7 with the second violin.
mms. 218-221
And... that's about it! Sometimes, a passage that has lots of notes in it doesn't actually have a lot of complexity to it. The repetition of elements is joined with a slow layering of instruments joining to texture to create a sense of building tension for the last approach to the ending. Also, coda sections typically don't have a lot of complexity to them (some exceptions may apply) because their function is to help bring the energy of the composition to a successful conclusion. Adding more development or complexity at this point runs the risk of creating an implication of more to come, which sort of defeats the point of a coda, which is trying to end things. Not saying its impossible, just saying there's a reason why so many classical pieces seem to end with lots of I-V-I phrases.
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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.
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Composing Phrase by Phrase 22
Recap's End
Hello and welcome or welcome back to Composing Phrase by Phrase! We're in the coda of the composition, trying to figure out how to end the dang thing. I guess I could just slap a V-I cadence on the end and call it a day, but... no. Last week's post took us on the first steps towards the ending. Let's keep tugging on that thread and see where it goes. Here's the next phrase for today:
mms. 194-205
The phrase kicks off with a passage of sixteenth-note runs reminiscent of measures 155-158. The segment is playing a similar role each time. Each of them is helping set up a structural change in the composition, the first returning us from the middle section into a return of the melody from the beginning and the second now taking us from the recap towards the end.
At 155, the runs were in groups of six. Here, they are in groups of four. Even though there isn't an actual difference in tempo between them, the smaller grouping gives the impression of 194 seeming "faster" because each iteration happens in a shorter amount of time. Same subdivision, different meter.
Viola and cello are playing the supporting role again, so let's start with them. The two alternate playing fast, crunchy chords. The base chord is a G major, but the cello adds a C-sharp to the mix. This gives the sonority a bit of extra pungent spice to it. The two instruments are offset from the meter, as well. By never playing on the downbeat, the rhythm has a feeling of driving instability.
mms. 194-197, viola and cello
The violins take turns alternating sixteenth-note runs on each beat of the meter. The ending of each dovetails into the next to create an overlapping flow of pattern. It also gives it a slight stereophonic effect, to the extent such a thing could be heard with a string quartet in a typical concert space.
mms. 194-197, violins
What are they doing harmonically? That's a little more difficult to describe. I'm going to note that I'm just going to describe how I wrote it. Theorists will likely have better language to describe what it is. Each measure runs the course of a hexachord, a group of six notes. It might be a little odd to call it a scale, but I guess that's what it is, actually. A scale with a gap of a third in there somewhere.
Each segment of the hexachord runs through three steps of a third. So the first hexachord, descending, is G, F, E, C, B, A, then repeating G. The first violin covers G, F, and E, as well as the skip to C before landing on B. The second violin picks up where the first left off going through B, A, G and then... E-flat. I don't have great logic for why it's E-flat instead of E. I'm pretty sure I wanted the half-step leading into the next measure's D. Could I go back and change the first violin's E to an E-flat? Yes. Will I? No.
m. 194, violin hexachord
The next hexachord in 195 is D, C, B-flat, G, F-sharp, E. The transposition isn't exact, but the change from a starting tone of G to D gives the impression of a tonic-dominant progression, somewhat. In 196, we have E-flat, D-flat, C-flat, A-flat, G, F. At 197, the hexachord starts up again on D, but then turns into a good old fashioned D7 arpeggio. The D7 helps give the previous measure's harmony some context and defines it as something of a secondary dominant, a V of V in G major.
One last detail - during the last beat of measure 197, the viola comes in to help push the phrase into the next with a continuation of the hexachord pattern.
mms. 195-197, hexachord progression
Measure 198-202 mark a return of the "interruption" motive. It's not the same as the others, but it's not so different that I feel like I need to go into great detail to describe it again. It's the half-step motive accompanied by big, crunchy chords built on C minor flat-nine, lots of sevenths, lots of accents, lots of lotsness. These measures act as the arrival point for the previous four bars.
mms. 198-202
Last but maybe least, we've got scales! SCALES! What kind of hack resorts to using... Ahem. I mean, yes, these scales help bring the momentum of the previous measure's energy towards the actual actual coda. Worth noting are the parallel fifths in measure 203, because I really can't be bothered, and the cello's entrance in 204 doubling the viola to allow a seamless transition to the lower register of the string quartet in 205.
The first violin's scale was written first and then harmonized by the second violin and the viola. Measure 203 follows a pretty straightforward D major scale starting on G (or G Lydian, if you like), while 204 tracks an E-flat minor scale with an extra chromatic step that allows the line to end on a D. From there, the viola and cello pick up with a B-flat whole tone scale pressing towards the B-flat arrival in 206.
mms. 203-206
And that about covers it! I'm sure I missed some interesting tidbits here and there. If you'd like, you can follow the blog on your RSS feed. Hope to see you again next week!
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Composing Phrase by Phrase 20
Down the Roller Coaster
Hello and welcome or welcome back to Composing Phrase by Phrase! The last couple of weeks have been exploring the transition from the second section in B-flat major back to the first section's material in D major. This week will be the last part of that transition. Hooray! Let's take a peek and see what we're working with.
mms. 155-162
That's a lotta notes! To recap a little bit, the measures 153-154 built up to a big high point of tension. Measure 155 is where the rubber band snaps and all that tension starts to spill out. Like a roller coaster! You approach the top of the hill, the pace slows up in antici --- PAtion, and then BAM! You're off to the races.
We'll start with the cello and the viola because they're the simpler parts of all this. In measures 155-156, the two instruments trade off the "cadence motive" that's been used off and on across the whole composition in a variety of ways. The chord is an augmented B-flat chord, although the B-flat is mostly dropped in measure 156. The instrument not playing the cadence motive punctuates the section with accented pizzicati.
mms. 155-156, cello and viola
The cello and viola then join up in octaves for measures 157-158. The line circles the target note A, first above it on a B-flat, then under it on a G-sharp. Harmonically, all of this is drawn from a whole-tone scale. Like the octatonic scale used in the previous phrase, the whole-tone scale has high ambiguity. Even with B-flats in the phrase, the connection to B-flat as a "tonic" has been pretty well obliterated at this point. There's still a sense of direction because of the previous arrival on an A in 150. This phrase extension helps give extra weight to that A when it comes back in measure 159.
mms. 157-158
Alright. Now the violins. There's lots of noodles here! But who doesn't like noodles? Before we get to the noodly contents, it will be a good idea to look at how all these have been strung together. The start and end tone of each string forms an octave. The octaves trace out a B-flat augmented triad over the course of the whole phrase. The exception is the very last one which is a G#.
mms. 155-158, violins
The noodles themselves are mostly drawn from adjacent whole-tone scales. The first one in measure 155, for example, uses B-flat, A-flat, and G-flat followed by a little hop to E-flat, D-flat, and everybody's favorite flat, C-flat. Not all of the noodles follow this outline. In 156, the line uses whole-tones (D, C, B-flat) followed by G-flat, F, and E-flat. This change is both for variety and to allow the line to fill the octave while keeping the motivic "hop" in the middle. For the most part, the noodles are made pretty much the same way.
mms. 155-157, noodly contents
There's a slight change in the first violin's line in measure 158 which helps prep the shift at 159. The chord at the end of 158 is mostly an E7. This is used as a secondary dominant to help set up the A as a dominant to bring us back home to D.
Next! The cello in 159-160 holds down the fort on a pedal tone, A. In 161-162, the bass line then descends a scale towards its target, D.
The violins and viola, for the most part, simply harmonize each with other up a chromatic scale. There's a couple wrinkles here and there so that it's not a perfectly straight line. The harmonization is our good ol' fauxbordon.
mms. 159-162, violins and viola
Rhythmically, the violins chug along on eighth-notes. The cello repeats the cadence motive in 3/4 (blue), a hemiola against the rest of the ensemble in 6/8 (yellow). The viola hops out of the chromatic scale for a moment to reinforce the harmonic progression with chords and to make the hemiola more obviously intentional. Lastly, the cello helps bring the line home with one last rhythmic slow-up, changing to triplet quarter-notes for two beats (green).
mms. 159-162, quartet rhythm
And that's it! Honestly, not as much to talk about as it might first appear.
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