The four options of continuation in musical composition

Gisela Paterno shares these four techniques for continuing with your musical stream of thought after a thematic statement.

https://www.piano-composer-teacher-london.co.uk/post/the-four-options-of-continuation-in-musical-composition

I believe this article can be of great use for a young composer seeking to oranise o structure his or her pieces. 

The aricle is assertive on explaining these four methods to enable the development of a basic theme.

We are looking forward to hear what you think 🙂

Edited January 25, 20206 yr by WKMT - Juan

I won't necessarily argue that it's bad for basic development, but I am a little worried all of your examples are from the common practice period. 

Thank you for your comment :)!

You are right, they are, but mainly because this article is meant for composition students in their basic - intermediate levels. 

We will be releasing another article which is meant to shed some light on other aspects of composition.

I'm fairly certain in Beethoven's Opus 2 Sonata, that the intention was to delay the sense of falling sequence. Since he goes from the tonic to dominant... using the Mannheim Rocket method... the expected resolution is generally achieved via downward sequencing of the primary or secondary motivic material. At the end of the example, he also changes the contour of the 16th note pattern- again messing with the listener's anticipation. 

Very nice example. Well that sonata is like a musical maestro 😉

Agree with Monarcheon, it’s centred in CPP and takes no account of developments that followed. It doesn’t have to deal with atonality that ultimately led to serialism, so perhaps it needs a preface note to say that it applies to music up to the point of Brahms and Bruckner or something similar.

There are a few new composers who could benefit by an understanding of structure and development because they do utilise tonality. I hear them here: endless drones, formulaic film-sounding music that simply….doesn’t develop; keys that never modulate; dorian harmony that dares only to drop to the VII. Whether they’ll learn anything I suppose depends on their determination to “grow.”

Just a personal opinion, I felt the article over-complicates the issue in some ways. Or perhaps it’s just me aware that I’d explain things differently.

Edited January 25, 20206 yr by Quinn

57 minutes ago, Quinn said:

Or perhaps it’s just me aware that I’d explain things differently.

The author seems to be from Argentina, so that means that english is their second or third language. I'd imagine if they wrote it in spanish it'd be easier, same with the other one which was frankly nonsense. I think this may be the reason (or maybe not, English is my third language and I manage to do just fine. Dunno. Benefit of the doubt and all that.)