Shameful Self-Promotion

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A few weeks ago, I posted a clip of a piece I had written, almost the first ever.  (An earlier effort from my teen years also exists, which has a certain youthful charm of its own.)

I'm beginning to realize just how much work goes into this; first, you have to "outline" the piece, in the sense of the way it would go in the large scale.  What would be the main tunes?  (You can't write a piece of more than a minute in length with just a single tune.)  How will the tunes be repeated, or varied?  What will be the chords we use?  And so on, and so forth.

Then you have to worry about whether there is an overall balance to the piece; whether, once you have finished tentatively putting all the tunes in the right places, whether one of them is a little too overpowering where you have placed it...!  Finally, you worry whether it sounded too much like Bach, or Mozart, or whoever!  That part was just too difficult to fix, so I left it alone.

One of my biggest problem was instrumentation.  In a fit of enthusiasm, I wrote the parts in such a way that most of them were interesting tunes, even if hidden in the lower parts.  (Many composers put in more effort into this than even I did.)  So it would help the inner parts to keep their individuality if they were assigned to highly individual tone-colors.  One of the best choices was, from high to low: Oboe, Accordion, Clarinet, Bassoon, and String bass.  (The Bass would be played bowed; a double-bass, in other words.)  The accordion was just a little too out in left field, so I settled on Oboe, Clarinet, French Horn, Bassoon, and Double-bass.

Serenade 7

[Added much, much later:]  I have been tinkering with the piece for weeks, and my principal problem was that I could not use a flute anywhere in it, since every part went down to A below Middle C.  I got the idea to transpose it higher, and now it has a more conventional instrumentation: Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and the bass doubled by a Bass Clarinet.

It has also been speeded up, and now has a duration of just about 3 minutes.  This is just a little too fast, but some features do come across better; the triplets don't seem to be quite as annoying as they used to be.

It is a short piece, and so does not require a lengthy guided tour.  You might enjoy listening for how the flute and oboe trade the opening tune around the 8th bar (or measure).  At this speed it sounds very cute and perky.

After the repeated first tune, there is the main minor key interlude, followed by the main tune again.  Then there is a second interlude in a more boisterous vein, after which the opening tune returns to round the piece out with a small coda.

There is a texture of churning triplets throughout, which is how I envisioned the piece from the outset.  So, as far as melody is concerned, the tunes are rather simple, but I'm hoping the complex harmonies provide some appeal.  The harmonies are not that complex; it's just that they're rather dense, moving more rapidly than most people are accustomed to hearing.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

[P.S.: Here is the most recent version (2010/4/13).  It has been slowed back down (about 80 quarter-notes a minute), and I've taken out the bass clarinet and put in a double-bass, which works better at the slower tempo.

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