Lydian Rhapsody

Lydian Rhapsody

As the title says, this piece is a rhapsody on the Lydian mode, and specifically three notes, F A and B, the three primary colors of F Lydian if you will. These three notes, and the intervals between them (M2, M3, and tritone), pervade the piece. The "theme" is stated in viola harmonics at the outset of the piece, but the tonal center of F lydian is obscured. Eventually there is a modulation to Db lydian, and here I quote Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra mov. 4. The opening theme of the movement are my building blocks of Lydian Rhapsody in inversion, major second up then major third up, outlining a tritone. This opening theme of Bartok's piece becomes almost a counter theme of the piece, as the way it's resolved is actually not in Lydian, but regular Ionian mode (E, F#, and A# forming the 4/2 inversion of the dominant seventh to B Ionian). I explore the relationship between Lydian mode and Ionian mode this way, as well as Lydian's connections to whole tone scales and other modes. I avoid "pure" Lydian mode until the very end, with the brass finally resolving the augmented fourth into a plain F major chord. The very end lets the listener fill in this resolution by having the woodwinds play the augmented fourth over a pedal F in the strings and brass and the resolution being heard in overtones.

In this work I also explore many hemiola ideas. The violas begin in a three pattern against four, and that idea is developed throughout the piece. Everyone is not quite together most of the time, and the texture is quite polyphonic during much of the piece. Only at the very end does the whole orchestra come together in an enormous mixed-meter burst of energy, repeating those three notes over and over again, B, A, F.

The shape of the piece is essentially a coming together of the whole orchestra from disparate polyphony to exuberant homophony, and a breakdown of the fundamental components of the Lydian mode.

See if you can figure out the other quotes I use ;). I'm sure plenty will know the section with tambourine

Oh, and sorry about the soft audio. I've tried raising it with Cubase, but then it clips in places. Anyway, best to listen to this with headphones, in a quiet place where there's no white noise...

Hey!

This is a very good piece. It uses lydian mode really well!

The detail is astounding. I think you really need to be able to hear all those parts in there. I like the lines individually as well, so I think it would turn out fine on real instruments (as long as they play loudly!)

I think the quotations work well in here. Better than when I use them! :P

Overall, the score is mostly clean, so good job there.

I really liked this! Thanks for posting :)

Heckel

Thanks for listenening! Really glad you liked it :D!

I remember giving you a lot of comments in the shoutbox the other day concerning this. I still love all the Zelda quotations

yeah, I remember the comments basically being "it's good, but I can't comment on it really until it's done"

So, uh, well, thanks for listening again :happy:

I'm replaying Zelda OoT right now, and it's amazing how much it's influenced me. Technically there's only one quote of it in there (Lost Woods, complete with tambourine and all!), but a lot of influence from the Almighty Koji Kondo in here :toothygrin:

yeah, I remember the comments basically being "it's good, but I can't comment on it really until it's done"

So, uh, well, thanks for listening again :happy:

I'm replaying Zelda OoT right now, and it's amazing how much it's influenced me. Technically there's only one quote of it in there (Lost Woods, complete with tambourine and all!), but a lot of influence from the Almighty Koji Kondo in here :toothygrin:

Um no... I gave you a LOT of comments lol. It was far more than: 'it's good, can't comment until it's done. lol'

well, that's the gist of what I remember, which is why threads exist (because comments in it are FOREVER). The shoutbox archive is crap, so we can never know for sure (I'd love to be proven wrong here). I mean, I remember you saying something about the direction of the piece, and that it seemed unfinished, and also that you liked the zelda references and caught some of the stravinsky references, but otherwise I can't really remember much critical commentary. sorry :ermm:

HELLO :D

THIS PIECE IS AN INTERESTING MIX OF SOUNDS TOGETHER :D

I LIKE HOW YOU FUSE THEM TOGETHER USING THE NICE NICE NICE LYDIAN MODE :D

although it sounds modern and honestly i ain't a fan of modern music, but i like the way you arrange them in the particular order at the beginning. :) and how they seem to merge together nice-ly and not entirely randomly. :D

AND,maybe u can add more melody lines here and there too :D

haha i don't know anything about the hemiola thingy lol :D Im someone who's weak in theory :P

AND!!!

I LIKE YOUR RHYTHM. VERY JUMPY. AND LIVELY. AND HAPPY.

P.S Pardon my poor music critique skills. :P

-CJJJJJJJJ HAAHAHA

Shameless quote from OOT, the wood theme and the chamber of sages (? I think).

*sigh* I'm sorry, dude, this is above me, it's too heavy for me to really analyze and give you good, in-depth feedback.

It flows well, it's got a ton of tasty contrast. The hemiola is awesome, I wish there was more of it extended even more than you did, I felt like I wanted to be driven even MORE crazy by it by that point in the music (you've got a huge Baccian mood build up to the metric break-down). The ending totally didn't work for me, all atmosphere. I mean, it's an exploration of the tritone sound, I get it. But it felt empty. The sprinkling of motives we've been hearing the whole time has disappeared. Maybe that's your intent, but it was unfulfilling to me, like something was left unsaid that really needed to be.

Sorry I couldn't offer more than that. HBD, bud! Thanks for sharing, it's an awesome piece. :santa:

-Pete

Thanks for reviewing, Pete :toothygrin:!

I understand what you're saying about the ending....but I think it'd be a lot more effective with a real orchestra, as the whole point is for the tritone to be "resolved" in the overtones, which will definitely be heard a lot easier with the fuller and more powerful effect of a live orchestra. With GPO it's quite underwhelming, but I think the sound from a real instruments would do it justice.

Awesome! Is this going to be performed and/or recorded??

Well......maybe. I will be having an orchestra piece performed next year, but probably not this one. I'm working on a more ambitious project, programmatic and with more extended techniques and experimentation (that's all I can say about it now :shifty:)

Now, I will be sending this to some competitions, so with some luck it'll get performed :P. Barring that, I'm going to try and produce an EWQL rendition with Cubase, so there should be a sweet recording of this at some point :D

:cool:

I dunno, as soon as the zelda started my eyes reflexively rolled. I mean, I hope you"re going for some audience chuckles here, because I damn sure did (chuckled). There's a fine line between quotation and fantasia on a theme, and you're leaning toward the latter. You're clearly talented orchestrationally, just think up your own material JASON DERULO

Beyond that, your percussion notation is odd. If you're gonna do the one line staff thing, put all the notes either on the line or just above/below (still touching). You have random donkey notes floating off the staff like balloons for no reason, plus I don't know why you notated some bass drum hits stem up and others stem down. Maybe I missed something. There's noting wrong with a full staff for percussion and giving each instrument its own line/space. A few things could be more specific, such as notating finger roll or shake roll in your tambourine part, but percussionists are frankly used to encountering nonspecific parts and making them work. One thing I would add as a courtesy is "to [x instrument]" when you want the percussionist to switch instruments.

Well, if it is a fantasia on a theme, it's more on Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra than the Lost Woods theme.

I really only quoted Zelda in that little section, and a few other times later on. Most of the piece is my own, believe me...I don't see why you got hung up on that tiny section which was clearly just a little throwback to my first encounter with Lydian mode, and one that I did hope made you chuckle with gleeful nostalgia.

In any case, good composers borrow, great composers steal ;) :lol:. Stravinsky did a hell of a lot (and he said that) as well as most succesful composers, especially writing variations on themes. That's how we learn, we take what's good and make it our own.

Also, I know the percussion notation is odd, it's that way for playback reasons in Finale. I'm cleaning up the score further and having the lines on the staff. I wanted a playback version first to have an audio recording, so now I'm working on the correct version of the score.