Bagheera

One semester of instrumentation, spending a day or two on each instrument.... it's impossible to really understand an instrument this way. You need to feel its sound, envelope, study the scores by the masters. I was always afraid my sounds would be awkward until I got my hands on an instrument. Once I could feel its soul, I could do anything with it. Is that odd?

Hi Pateceramics! This is a lovely piece. After reading the purpose behind its composition, I understand why some of the choices were made. So, let's get down to it. The one thing that truly bothered me in this piece was the change of pace between sections. Up until m. 23, there had been no stopping the eighth note pulse. This brings a lot of attention to the "leadeth me" words. That, combined with the somewhat awkward harmonic language there, kind of jarred me. My instinct, as a composer, would be to continue building the motion here. Especially since it is followed by another iteration of the theme, that could be a moment to build the dramatic motion of the song where I feel it comes to almost a full stop here. The piano part is perfectly playable to me, and not awkward fingering-wise. Some of the voicings and harmonic choices are suspect to me... I'm not always sure what harmony you're going for. Like in m. 2, that is a iii leading to vi which is sort of a dominant motion, but kind of altered to be modal. I like it! But, it's just not obvious. And, what makes that challenging is you sometimes resolve to the V at the same time you move to the vi, which creates this dissonance. This is also nice! But, harmonically confusing. What is does is make the song feel harmonically stagnant and uneven. In a simple tonal piece like this one, I got bored halfway through. Thank you for sharing it! -B