Lessons with Peter W

Peter, your assignment:

The first thought I had when seeing the score was 'Bartok!' (alright, so I'd been practising his Six Dances previous to seeing this) something that was in many ways borne out by the music on listening. I hope you understand that's quite a compliment as Bartok was a modern follower of Bach, and I see some very good and inventive things here. The material is all derived from two motivic groups, a melodic one and a 'Bulgarian' rhythm, as demonstrated in the right-hand's first two bars. I'm glad you thought about the rhythmic aspect of development alongside the melodic, as this is what I shall be looking at in the next lesson.

Firstly, imitating with an inversion of the motif, as in bar 2, is a wonderful way to sidestep the predictability of imitative entries. This is followed by some nice forzspinnung of the basic intervals in the next few bars - I won't go into precise detail but I can see exactly how you've avoided directly repeating the same phrase as the music moves along. The two types of motif have roughly equal importance in the piece as a whole, although this varies in different sections. In a nice combination of both contrast and continuity, in b.9-10 the shape of the left hand's melody follows the stresses of the right's rhythm. This is followed by a change of rhythmic feeling for the next passage.

It might have been good to have some more direct imitation, and imitative entries between the hands, later in the piece. The two lines play literally without a break almost until the last bar and it would have been refreshing to introduce a few more rests, however brief, into the texture. In addition, although you mostly avoid direct repetition of a phrase, there were several ascending sequences which felt very predictable (b.15-16 one example), especially as the harmony tends to change on the barline. The ending cadence was also rather too neat and tonal to fully fit the style; I was expecting at least to finish on a seventh chord or with just one line. Another thing to consider is that the melodic motif is quite scalic and it might have been good by the end to make more of the ascending fifth and/or octave displacement (although there was a little of this in the last two lines; l.h. in b.23-4 and having the right hand in octaves 27-28). The other underused idea was the two repeated notes in this motif. I don't wish to be too harsh over the former points as the assignment was to concentrate on the spinning-out of motifs more than the complete parameters of a finished piece, but something to think about in the future assignments.

Next lesson will be on rhythm.

Yeah, I have a bit of a problem of varying the momentum of a piece...energy is fine, but letting the music stop and restart (or slow down and restart) is hard for me.

waiting...

looking forward esspecially to sectional development. :)

Guys, an apology. I was planning to write out and put up the next lesson this afternoon, but have been asked to do a gig at the last minute by a good friend this evening. So it will have to be postponed until tomorrow.

Hey, I lova the last minute $$$$ gigs too. ;) Have fun!

Right, I'd like to do a sort of short intermediate lesson on rhythm: Motivic development lessons 3.pdf

The gig was very enjoyable and I got a rather larger fee than I'd expected given that it wasn't a professional ensemble.

ah, crud. You serious? Alright...probably gonna do this one by hand.

About doing a lesson of rhythm? Absolutely. It's a highly overlooked parameter in a lot of composition and its potential for development on an equal footing to tonal things is underused. But we will get on to the 'interesting stuff' - long-range development with lots of Brahms and Bach - in the next lesson.

Advance warning - I shall be in darkest Hungary (OK, mostly Budapest) between the 30th June and 8th July and as such cannot guarantee my access to the internet during this time (I'll be damned paying over the odds for it on my phone).

No, I mean the use of unpitched percussion. x_x Hahaha! I actually enjoy rhythmic development quite a bit, rhythm stuff comes pretty naturally to me. Math mind.

Warning noted. I may or may not be done with this assignment before then. Either way, that sounds rather exciting. What are you doing up there?

Short concert tour with my old university chamber orchestra. Actually, I've played for them so much since leaving I might as well still be a member and not a guest, but we needed extra people to come (even non-players) to make the economics of hiring a coach work. Programme is Haydn and Beethoven, and a 'fun' concert in which my swanee-whistle will be used. I can look forward to a 31 hour bus journey each way, so I do hope we take a boat and not the Eurotunnel across the water.