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Ashes Fall

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This is the electronic recording of the second and third movements of "Ashes Fall," a difficult and post-tonal piece I composed last year for my composition lessons. Since the first movement is lyrical and requires the use of plucked piano strings, I was unable to produce a recording on my keyboard. Let me know what you think of this! Thanks.

Ashes Fall

You know, as I listened to this, I didn't really get the sense this was atonal. Maybe in a strict sense it is, but it felt more to me like the piece is just adhering to an unusual kind of tonality. (Does post-tonal mean atonal?)

I really like the dangerous and over-bearing feeling of the pieces (I think the 1:19 mark was the end of the 2nd movement, right? It's such a slight pause, I could hardly tell.) The 2nd feels sickly, in a way, while the 3rd just feels...violent. Like an awful aftermath of some sort, or something to that effect. I love it! :phones:

Thanks for sharing :)

  • Author

Post-Tonal is an ambiguous term, but I use it to describe this for a couple reasons. The second movement (first thing you hear) starts out whole-tone based, then moves to rather typical atonality. This doesn't mean that certain pitches aren't more important than others, it just means there isn't one singular note that is centered around, and with the exception of the joke ending, there's no traditional harmony. The third movement centers around C minor sorta, but I still don't much use traditional harmony.

  • Author

But thanks for the comment! And yes, 1:19 was the separating point.

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