Anything else I need to consider for a tarantella?

So, I have been writing a suite for Chamber Ensemble for this past week. This is the ensemble I am writing it for:

• Flute
• Oboe
• Clarinet
• Bassoon
• 2 Violins
• Cello
• Double bass
• Piano

The suite is of North American animals, so as to overlap as little as possible with Saint Seans' Carnival of the Animals. One of the movements of my suite is about spiders. I have no idea where this movement will end up in the whole scheme of things, but I have 12 animals for my suite. With that in mind, I figured it would fit to compose a tarantella as a movement. But I didn't know many tarantella pieces. I only played like maybe 3 tarantella pieces in 10 years of playing the piano. So I listened to 6 different tarantellas by different composers. I noticed similarities between them. This is what I found:

• 6/8 is typical, though 12/8 and 4/4 are sometimes used instead
• Constant eighth note momentum until the final cadence
• Shared rhythmic components
• Often either eighths or dotted quarters in the bass(Chopin and Beethoven both have eighth note heavy bass lines in their tarantellas for example)
• Most of the rhythmic components in the melody itself

Those shared rhythmic components that I mentioned? Here they are:

Outside of rhythm, time signature, tempo and momentum though, I don't see any similarities. Often in dances I will see similarities in harmonic progression. But I didn't see that for the tarantella. None of the ones I found were in minor with the exceptions of Liszt's Tarantella and Tchaikovsky's Tarantella from The Nutcracker, but a lot of them had sections in minor(you can really hear that minor key in Chopin's tarantella).

Here are the tarantellas I listened to:

No similarities harmonically or melodically that I hear amongst these 6 Tarantellas. With the Waltz or the Minuet, at least I hear harmonic similarities. Not so for the Tarantella.

So is there anything like harmonically or melodically to consider? Or am I simply left with arranging the rhythmic components into a melody and harmony of my own? The plus side of writing it for a chamber ensemble as I am doing here is that it is easier to keep the momentum going without exhausting the players(like if the piano has some rests, the woodwinds can carry that momentum, and so on)

The tarantella is an Italian dance (I think) so use Italian music style harmonies. The distinguishing feature of a tarantella is the compound (usually) metre and the relentless motion. It often speeds up gradually through the whole movement.

This is an old piece of mine, when I was just starting to write for chamber groups. The final movement is a tarantella:

52 minutes ago, aMusicComposer said:

The tarantella is an Italian dance (I think) so use Italian music style harmonies. The distinguishing feature of a tarantella is the compound (usually) metre and the relentless motion. It often speeds up gradually through the whole movement.

This is an old piece of mine, when I was just starting to write for chamber groups. The final movement is a tarantella:

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by Italian style harmonies. Granted, my only real exposure to truly Italian classical music is Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, and Verdi, but still, I don't know what you mean by Italian style harmonies. And yes, I know that Tarantellas have relentless motion, I mentioned the constant eighth note momentum until the final cadence in the post.

15 minutes ago, caters said:

I'm not sure what you mean by Italian style harmonies. Granted, my only real exposure to truly Italian classical music is Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, and Verdi, but still, I don't know what you mean by Italian style harmonies.

To be honest, I don't know what Italian style harmonies are. I know that different countries have different styles, but I couldn't tell you any specific features.