Peregrination

Thank you for the compliments, Christopher Dunn-Rankin, and cj7music for you helpful comments. Christopher: I will be sure to reconsider the introduction of the sprech..it is used to help the characterization of the woman singing this text, but also as a bit of a novelty I guess. So perhaps there is too much focus put on the latter and not enough on the former! Thank you for complimenting the harmonies, i rather like them myself. When you say it moves too fast, do you mean measurewise - in your head it should have more measures - more length? Or do you mean more along the lines of harmonic rhythm? I'll explore fluctuations/contrasts between the speeds of the rhythms in the vocal line and the piano line for sure, at the beginning the vocal sings what the piano plays at the end and vice versa.. c7music: you have your speculations i believe, as we discussed in a pm as to who DC was - so thank you for enlightening me. apparnetly a fellow colleague of millay's at vassar. i've been toying with different rhythms for that part of the song and i think i can ix it by moving it 1/2 beat. [one eighth note]...i feel very strongly that the rhythm should be constant for that - not varied. thanks for the suggestions :)

and a pdf, thanks to christopher dunn-rankin for the help :) persephone.pdf - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

i think i'll be printing the music for this thread out, and i'm going to extend a huge thank you to the harpists who have contributed their thoughts!! i'm mildly interested in celtic/classical crossover.. for a harpist who might play scottish music on their scottish harp, such as this: would it be hard to play the harp we use for classical or vice versa? what you write for one, could you write for the other exactly or would you have to write two different versions?

impresario: it definitely was worked on before this month, this has been a long time off and on thing - so i'll have to back out. i'm not sure if millay is talking about embodying the characteristics of persephone or if she is talking about the actual myth, but since not all are able to view the score i'll post the text: e to her, Persephone, All the things I might not be; Take her head upon your knee. She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free, She that had no need of me, Is a little lonely child Lost in Hell,—Persephone, Take her head upon your knee; Say to her, “My dear, my dear, It is not so dreadful here.” i was reluctant to post a midi file because of all the sprechtissme and scoops in the voice, however, here it is: persephone.mid - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

if you think all systems should be spaced so, maybe you should talk to peters, or barenreiter, or b&haertel...

i agree..very pleasing. i really like the form, and how it is almost a study, as morivou said, in consonance and dissonance!

and, as i realized after posting - that score is MUCH too small to see. my apologies to the non sibelius users.

hi, i wrote this just as a simple song, or so i thought - but then i realized that the range is quite large. i have culled it back quite a bit from the notes i would like to be there - there was a high c. i rewrote that part down a bit, to make the song more singable. i'm not sure what i was trying to accomplish her, the singer is somewhat manic - illustrated perhaps by the use of sprechtissme and the singer yelling certain notes. this will hopefully be part of a bigger piece... a staged oratorio - which makes it not an oratorio i guess. the text is by edna st. vincent millay and it comes from a set of poems 'memorial to dc' so i'm thinking of writing the rest of the set for various other voicings and choral settings, etc. any comments would be appreciated, i am only beginning but hope that there is some understanding of harmony within the piece. i'd appreciate honest comments about whether or not it would be embarassing to put this piece on a stage or not, as i may have the opportunity to do so. many thanks, matthew and a midi: http://www.box.net/shared/j9x824fhgu pdf: http://www.box.net/shared/nzbonx4z2m persephone.sib

I really like this, and I have to say that a lot would be tempted to add some kind of instrumental backing to this but I think it is just very dear with the three girls' voices. You might want to add something in the score about the two sopranos' matching their high a's at the end because the two a's we heard in this performance were of very different tonal qualities... there were a few times where the voices were in unison and then they split to a chord where the voice leading felt a bit unnatural, but if these sudden chords are intentional then i guess they are just not to my flavor! :) keep up the great work, i hope your department is supporting your work!! m

i very much like it - i think it is okay that hte accompaniment is mostly the same - it gives the vocal line room to breathe melodically.

why is the scoring of the period? we don't have to be stuck in the ways of the pre-baroque and baroque if we don't want to be...the motifs are very early also. the cello line would be more effective if it employed different types of motion, i think. not much to say of the vocal line because the tenor clef gives me a headache.

a mod can feel free to close this: the solution this problem is to download the update to sibelius 5.0.. it's a problem with leopard with 5.0 i think. m.

I love the berg piano sonata, i'm not sure if it's 12 tone. but i think it is, just from listening.

Hi, maybe i'm being stupid. I finally bought myself my own copy of Sibelius today and I'm on a Mac (only been using a Mac since Sept..) and when I try to save a sibelius file and I go into my finder it isn't there... no matter what i do.... I love the program though, such a lovely feeling!

i believe in a robert w. smith band piece he uses a tempo marking, "bombastic" i like that.