07 September 2013

Postcard from the Orange Line

The contrapuntal application of the cello tune (none of which I've yet shown you) turned out startlingly well. At first, I found that the tune works very nicely as a strict canon at the fourth; so my work yesterday (and probably begun the day before) was to decide what I wanted to do for a third voice. I discarded three attempts at a solution, most of them in the spirit of keeping the repetition strict. The apparent problem with those first attempts, was the pitch-world, which wound up expanding in ways I did not wish for this piece. But as I set to the fourth attempt, I understood that my deeper concern was, that with a third voice about the same business, the rhythmic profile was getting too active. (That consideration, plus the pitch-world, would really have pulled a delicate piece entirely out of shape.) So the solution for the third voice is a rhythmic augmentation, and for the sake of the harmonic interplay already established by the 2-voice canon, I alter the contour as I see fit.
That was the work on my train rides yesterday. And I hoped to fold that into the Sibelius file this morning. Which I did (I thought I might be able to export a pdf file to send you this morning, but the time grew short, and it would have been tempting Fate), and the cool tenderness of the result is all that I might wish.
I need to discover just what wants doing for the final section, now. But I'm letting that rest, and my work on the bus just now was the start of the clarinet/marimba duet for Tim Phillips, just what everyone was expecting.

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