Passacaglia in B Minor

I completed my passacaglia. Please feel free to correct me if my terminology is incorrect. Also, I apologize about the sibelius file. It works fine, but I don't really know how to use the program so the format is a little odd looking. The two midi files are for comparison (if one sounds worse than the other). One is piano, the other uses bassoon (the Church Organ midi instrument sounds awful, imo)

There are 14 statements of the ostinato, broken into 4 main sections. The first statement is the ostinato itself, the following two statements are varied a little to accommodate the 2 statement long uppervoice accompaniment. This 2 statement long tendency remains throughout much of the piece.

There are only 2 literal repetitions of upper voice material, but the difference is the form the ostinato takes.

The 4th, 7th, and 10th statements are modulations to Em (and back to B again after these statements complete). They break up the piece into the 4 sections.

Following the uppervoice 2 statement long tendencies, the first half of the passacaglia is more or less normal, while the second half begins to make use of a melodically inverted version of the ostinato (the two Em modulations there are mostly the regular ostinato).

This piece ends with in a single voice (upper) doing an appregiation that hints at the ostinato.

The feeling this piece gives me is one of foreboding, sometimes in a playful sort of way (if that makes any sense). There is also a sense of not having completed something important, like an awareness of negative consequences hanging over your head.
Edit: well I just thought of a name, or a way to get to the name. What this piece really makes me think of is sailors drowning at sea. Something like "Sea's Lament", "Lament of the Drowned Sailors". It's like the piece is describing the story of what happened to this unfortunate group of seafarers. Thalatos Oduromai? (greek, since this brings the odyssey to my mind).

What is to follow after that is a 4 voice fugue using the ostinato as its subject (double fugue, though that kind of makes me feel like I'm ripping BWV 582 more than I already am). When it stabilizes the fugue is to alternate between the mirror form and the normal form, punctuated by modulatory episodes of mostly unrelated material. I also plan to run the subjects in B major for a short while. I have the thing planned, and I've finished the first exposition (of 6). I'm a little nervous about starting the episode for some reason (I've never gotten far enough in a fugue to write one yet).



I have an mp3 using an organ soundfont, if the midis/sibelius sound terrible. At any rate, feel free to use whatever is most comfortable/convenient for you.

www.bitblade.djbouche.net/things/Passacaglia_in_Bm .mp3

I quit liked it. The way you make use of the two voices is great. The breaking off the rhythem around 3.18 is nice, although i feel you could have done this more frequent before that timemark. It gets a little repetative with that constant rhythem.

I like the fact that the bass line is always implied, but varied, which keeps it in style. I also like the fact the fact that this does not sound overly modern, since I like the old styles. The harmonies were well constructed imo, though it was sticking to I-V in feeling. The constant thirds, however, do get quite tiring... why don't you explore fourths and fifths? The dissonance was very effective throughout the piece, imo. I could feel the ostinato throughout most of the piece, which is also a plus. I think that the scales at the end should change direction in accordance with the ostinato.

The ending surprised me! I thought this was done! Is it done?

Thank you both very much for commenting.

The passacaglia is more or less done (though I still find myself fine tuning parts of it here and there). Its supposed to go without break into a double fugue (to which I've written up to the first episode).

The chord progression was incidental since I'm not well versed in that part of music theory. I rely on my ears to tell me if I hit a sour note in a chord (though sometimes dissonance in the right spot seems to fit, but at other times).

So I should add more variety to the upper voices and use more than one hand/voice structure? Or otherwise edit it up a bit to be less static in its use of chords?

The fugue is going to take a while to complete since I've never been all that good at them (the linear nature of the passacaglia was a lot more forgiving to work with). I can't say I'm really happy with the way the opening exposition turned out, either. The flow of it seems contrived after the first statement. The only part I really like is the accompanying subject (though apparently I suck at writing in invertible counterpoint).

The idea is to eventually have the mirrored form state itself after every normal statement of the subject. I could layer both on top of each other and let contrary motion do its thing but I'm reluctant to do so.

very good work!

Dude:

Creating PDF files with GhostScript

I can't see the score in .sib cuz I got an older version (I hate sibelius 5.) So for next time, a PDF is fine too.

If this is the same thing you showed me, it's better than when I saw it. Say, what organ soundfont were you using for the mp3?

And, y'know, this reminds me a LOT of medieval music or chanting... I don't know exactly why but there are moments where the harmony bounces back and forth as if you were making parallels so I get that impression. Plus probably the melody is so old-sounding~

This sounds a lot closer to Buxtehude than Bach though, which isn't a bad thing really.

... Oh wait, you DID write parallels. That's the sound I was talking about, hahaha. Hell, right at the start with the chords you have like, 5 5th parallels in a row. I like how it sounds honestly but Bach would have never done it like that, nor Buxtehude as far as I know. So, depends on what you were shooting for. I like them parallels.

Either way, I don't know what you intended with the monody-like ending, since you don't return to the tonic, there's no cadence, hinted or otherwise and it just seems like a fragment or something unfinished. (in fact it reminds me of Bach's unfinished fugue in kunst der fugue.)

I'm not sure what style are you going for, if I didn't know better I'd just say this is a sort of modern/old mix piece, since a lot of stuff sounds either very very old or neo baroque/modern. Hell, you could've gone even further and added more dissonances, rhythms and other techniques to mix it up even further.

But as a recreation of style... well, which style? This is closer to Buxtehude, but the piece doesn't seem to have any structural togetherness that would hint at composers from that time (though I wouldn't compare Buxtehude's structures to Bach's...)

Without all of that, it's pretty neat and all (parallels~), if a little uncertain/?.

This piece is really interesting. Judging by your introduction above, it sounds like you wanted to imitate the Bachian / Buxtehudian passacaglia tradition by resorting to the baroque idiom and copying many of the harmonic, melodic and motivic techniques employed therein.

Despite this, the composition sounds almost wholly dissimilar to Bach or Buxtehude. In fact, it sounds nothing like them. The result was something entirely original. It's often said that the best bursts of originality occur when someone tries to copy someone. . . . and fails spectacularly. I think this goes some way to illustrating that maxim. I like this piece a lot, but it's not harmonically similar to Buxtehude, despite what's been said above.

It sounds neither very old nor neo-baroque. . . . it's sort of. . . . I dunno. Like someone playing Buxtehude underwater or something.

Thank you all for the advice. The fugue was giving me a devil of a time until I simplified the ostinato. Hopefully it's not too random sounding? The key modulations may be a tad bit sloppy, as well as other parts of it (though it sounds much better than the many parts I discarded... writing this thing was much harder than the passacaglia by far!). Although I'm sick of working on this, after taking a break from it for a time I may try to get back in and reorganize it more efficiently like I did with the passacaglia (as compared to its older versions).

This pieces does sound suggestive of singing (its why it made me think of a dead/drowning ships crew singing of their sorrows and adventures).

I had to take the advice I received on simplifying the ostinato to be more suitable for a fugue (but only for the fugue). Something about it is still sloppy. I can't believe how long this is now (about 8 minutes 20 seconds or so).

I saved the sibelius file in version 4 compatibility.

As for the soundfont I am using, it's called Orgue and you can obtain it here: Organ Soundonts in a rar archive

Orgue only goes down to C3. I had to cheat by warping its sound down one octave to achieve a better range (using two channels, one deepened, one normal).


Edit: blech after giving this another listen, I'm wondering how the devil I missed all the mistakes in alignment before the romp in major keys. Well at least it's useful for ideas... and a coda. Yeah, I need to sleep.

And finally the mp3 for those who want it.
Passacaglia_&_Fugal_Inv_No1_in_Bm