Nymph's Sleep (Opus 17)

A small lullaby thing I did for my Music Production (high school) class. The only objective was to produce a piece that will be exactly 2 minutes (my exceeds 120 seconds, but only because of the delay and reverb - I had to leave two empty bars for the sound to go down). I also tried to experiment with the harmony. It's a bit flexible, balancing between C major/minor and G major/minor. I just wanted to get out of the frame of choosing one key and using it's parallel or relative key. On the other hand, I do not want to write atonal music. Nymph's Sleep is written for two harps, glockenspiel, small string section (violoncellos and bassess), flute and bassoon, celesta, and synthesizers (bell synthesizers with a lot of delay). There is no score for this composition yet. Thank you for listening and let me know whether it's harmonically bearable - I did not study harmony yet.

When you actually modulate, I think it's pretty smooth, actually. However, when you use the borrowed tonic chord, sometimes it isn't as smooth, but not for the reason you think probably. When you go from C major to C minor, I hear it more as you going from I to flat(iii)6, denoting the flat borrowed chord. In other words, I hear it going from C major to E-flat major 6 (or 13, if you'd prefer). I don't know why this is... maybe you have a different bass note...? However, that chord was made awkward further by having the flute play an A-flat in it which is the minor 6 in C and the perfect fourth in E flat, so it doesn't really fit anywhere in totally tonal music. You G major to G minor was better mostly, but sometimes I did hear a flat iii chord instead of a minor i. Other times it was okay. It really depended on where. There was one point (I don't have a time stamp) where there was a B natural and B flat playing at the same time that really didn't sound good. Might want to look into that.

It's definitely harmonically "bearable", It's a little unconventional at times, but I think it mostly works. It functions quite well as a lullaby except for when there are clashing tones.

I agree with what Monarcheon said regarding how the harmony comes across as a listener:

10 hours ago, Monarcheon said:

When you go from C major to C minor, I hear it more as you going from I to flat(iii)6, denoting the flat borrowed chord. In other words, I hear it going from C major to E-flat major 6 (or 13, if you'd prefer).

A lot of it has to do with how you set up the low voices. Not just the bass, but all parts playing in that range. I've been experimenting with this myself and it's helping me begin to understand how I can affect my harmony just with how I space the voices. A nice exercise I do to explore those sounds is playing the same triad--for example C major--in root position: CEG. Then I'll shift it to first inversion and second inversion. Next I'll put the notes farther apart, for example C-G-E, and repeat the inversions with that spacing. I'll work through that a little bit, playing each in arpeggios and block chords before adding extensions and starting all over. I'm now beginning to see how spacing the harmony affects the way we hear it, and how I can use to that achieve certain sounds like convincing the audience it's a C minor chord instead of an Eb extension.

Hope this helps, it's quite a lovely piece to listen to in terms of sound and construction. Keep up the good work! :)

Gustav Johnson

Hi, I've been listening to your stuff on here and I think you have some of the most unique melodies; your music are always a joy to listen to. 

This one is beautiful as well and overall it lives up to its title well. 

Thank you all for comments, listening and some hints!

Very pretty, definitely fits the title you give it. I enjoy your always interesting choice of orchestration.