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Nocturne in Eb arrangement


caters

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This is the first time that I have arranged a Chopin piece. Not only that, but it is the first Chopin piece I ever played, so I am very familiar with this piece. I know, I need a countermelody or something along those lines for the first violin. But there is a bit of a problem stopping me from doing this. That is just how close the second violin gets in pitch to the flute. Typically, there is less than an octave of space between the second violin and the flute in any given beat. That doesn't allow for many countermelody notes if I want to keep things relatively consonant. And of course I want to keep things relatively consonant because of the beautiful melody in the flute. I also don't want to have the countermelody have so many short notes that it becomes the main melody. The flute is playing the main melody and I don't want to underwhelm that(I already get close to that with some of the forte dynamics).

There are no slurs in what I have written, mainly because the phrasing of the bass line is super clear just from the notation and, I have no idea where a flutist would take a breath. I can only barely get the first and second octaves to sound right, still doing that C major octave scale exercise and the staccato exercise on my flute. And this is after more than a month of flute practice, so while I technically can play melodies on the flute at this point, I am limited to legato melodies with short phrasing that aren't super elaborate.

What do you think of my arrangement of Chopin's Nocturne in Eb?

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The exercise of arranging is finding different ways to adapt the original piece. You have no obligation to be faithful to the original.
Part of what makes this piece so memorable are the sudden deviations off of a theme in a very isographic sort of way, so that even the most jarring changes seemed planned. Experimenting with texture a little bit more to highlight these sorts of things might help its cause. The cello in its current state will not sound super pretty without careful dedication to position changes, as the constant string changes will potentially lose some of the effect of the left hand of the piano.

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