Grand Traverse

While on vacation in Traverse City, Michigan, in November, I came upon a sight that simultaneously humbled, emboldened, and brought me peace. In this piece, I attempt to explore the colors and ideas that came to my head while witnessing this sight.

The piece has four distinct sections which are all united by a single melodic fragment. The piece was constructed using melodies and not harmonies, so there is no underlying tonic-dominant relationship. The tonal shifts and harmonic progressions are dictated by melody only. The melodic ideas are generally extracted from a hexatonic Locrian scale.

I hope you enjoy listening to it.

Grand Traverse

This piece was very interesting to listen to. I enjoyed it in spite of the fact that the style is completely foreign to me (I mostly listen to film music and classical music in styles such as those of Beethoven and Chopin). I particularly liked the allegro melody starting at measure 150. The andante section also stood out to me.

For some reason the first 149 measures were less appealing to me than the second half of the song, but I'm not certain why (as I said, I'm not at all familiar with this kind of music). It's not that I disliked measures 1 - 149, it's just that after a while it started to drag a little bit.

Nice work! :happy:

Edit: ...I'm listening to it a second time, and I'm liking the first half of the song much better on the second listen...

Thank you!

I'm glad you liked it. I suppose the third and fourth section are a little less obscured in their harmonic motion, so that might be why you liked it better. It's one of the more dense works I've written and probably would take some time to understand completely.

Thanks again :)

What I really like in this piece is the shifty harmony.

I notice there is quite some lines in unison. Maybe I haven't studied enough other scores but I haven't seen this much. At times even the melody is played by two (ms 30ff,...) . So, interesting tone color;)

And then I do not mean the bold unison passages as a statement of the motive, like ms 17. BTW I really like that phrase. With the last two notes of ms 18 not in unison but parallel chords. Nice modal flavour. I think I would space those chords differently though, since I feel the gap between V1 and V2 is too large. I think I would move both V2 and the viola a 3rd up, make the chord a bit wider, or add the notes an octave below in violin 1. I think, as the ending of that phrase it can be more bold. I would add something there to achieve that.

Another interesting point in the piece is the Ab of ms3. At first I though it should be respelled as a G#. At least I perceive it as the leading tone. But spelled like this it makes sense as well. The Ab chord is a bit odd though. I am not sure why each voice is spelled as it is. With the danger of destroying some motivic exposition I missed, I would like to propose a minor change: on the 2nd beat to give V1 a C, and the Viola a G. The lines flow more natural then. And when V1 has a C the initial motive seems a bit more clear imitated. Anyway, that point, 2nd beat ms3 seems to miss C. But maybe you swapped V1 and Viola for tone color? Then the C for the viola would be a solution, although the leap would be sort of big... Well. Interesting puzzle :D

Well. Some details from me. Interesting piece to dwell in for a time. I loved the opening. The 2nd statement has a more impressionistic texture which I like, nothing fancy though, but I do not expect that either, I guess. The 3rd (esspresivo) part felt a bit empty like a gap. To be picked up by the final allegro.

Hi,

Thanks! You make some good points, so thank you for recognizing these things. The bringing of voices in unison is a textural choice, yes. You can find a lot of this type of writing in turn-of-the-century quartets (Sibelius' quartet for example). In measure 17, I didn't want the violin to have to push out the melody over the strength of the other parallelized strings. By giving it some space, it can play its line freely and have it be just as powerful in the listener's head while giving some density to the lower/middle.

As for measure 3, the chord that is sounded on beat 2 is not really a by *design* - It's melodically constructed. Rather, the G in violin 1 is the next highest note to the Ab in the cello, and so the chord really exposes the harmony for the rest of the piece because instead of playing a normal Eb chord, there is an altered bass Bb which is lowered a step. The melody played in parallel by viol2 and viola is used motivically later and to not immediately kill the texture, I decided to use pure counterpoint in the violin 1. This melody, in a sense, is an Eb altered chord that "falls" to the A major chord, because 3 voices move parallel down to the A chord (and the bass moves up).

So within bar 3, I wanted to set up this idea of harmonic tension that I utilize a *lot* later. For example, in the section at measure 41, the modality switches from E locrian to G minor to Db major and if you notice, the transition from G minor to Db major (movement by tritone) is preceded by that same melodic motive in measure 3. So it's all about setting up the later parts :)

Ah yes the sparse section was supposed to feel empty, disconcerting, but peaceful.

Sorry for the long reply. Thanks again! :)

Sorry for the long reply. Thanks again! :)

I don't mind long replies. It's the reward for being thorough enough that wanted to reply me that long :D

Yes, definitely :) Thank you for being so thorough! Though I wish you were more thorough on the more complex sections developmentally haha (the first allegro, sparse andante, and 2nd allegro sections).

I'm not one to critique string music....all I can say it is very lovely . Sorry I can't be of more help :S

You set yourself up a challenging harmonic language for an extended work. The strong pentatonic/modal scales challenge a composer to create a variety of degrees of rest and tension. It starts of well in the Allegro but the continued quarter note figures in the slower middle section do drag a bit. I think in part it is the harmonic language. I like the reduced contrast in rhythmic variety so I think it needs a performance to work out some of the dynamics. I'd also check your doublings in that section - I'd like to hear more degrees of overlap. Fairly small adjustments I think.

The final movement is a good succinct summation of the prior two movements basic motivic cells and I like you keep it short.

Everything I have said so far depends on the first rehearsal or tow of the piece for minor adjustments. What the piece could use now is just experimenting with the metronome markings. The first movement is fine, the andante could just need a few poco accels or rits --- maybe just a rubato and a slightly fast initial metronome marking. The third, I think is fine though I would suggest for experimentation sake, seeing what it would sound like with one or two different tempo markings as the the last movement reminds me of the instrumental ending of a dramatic work - with a few contrasting tempi. It may turn out to be far too much for the duration of the movement.

Anyway, I hope you get a recording as I think this mp3 dulls the true impact of the piece.

PS. Like to emphasize I have no problem with your harmonic language - just that the challenge of it is you need non-harmonic ways of inducing varying degrees of rest and tension which you achieve with overall good results.

Thanks, Elizabeth and Chris.

It's alright, you don't have to give suggestions if you don't have any, Liz :)

Chris - I think it's really interesting how you've broken up the piece into movements, when I clearly didn't. Some people see 5 movements in it, some see 4, and some see 3... but I see one overarching idea and 3 subsections. It's just interesting... I understand your complaint about the 2nd andante section and I suppose adding some tempo changes would definitely draw the listener on, but given the static and soloistic nature of the passages, I would much rather hear the live performers improvise on the tempo. So perhaps I should write molto rubato a piacere or something like that.

I consider the final allegro+andante+adagio ending to be one section, so personally I didn't feel like the finale-esque nature of the ending was too overpowering (but I'm quite glad that it came across with that feel because that's something that I'm terrible at).

Also, thanks for pointing out the fact that since I couldn't really use a traditional tonal plot for this piece that I'd need other ways of building/releasing tension :) I hope to get a recording by the end of May... but you know how these things go. I'll probably have it by September at this rate....

Thanks again!