The Tortoise, the Hare & the Fox: Variations on 3 Themes

Hello people!  Late last year I helped organize and host "The Tortoise and the Hare" Young Composers Instrumental Music Composition Competition and now I've finally had the time to write a piece in that theme as well!  I've picked Bassoon for representing the Tortoise, Piccolo for the Hare and Solo Violin for the Fox.  I didn't intend for this to be a fully exhaustive set of variations on each theme - only to allow me to characterize each personality in the fable to the best of my ability.  I've also tried to follow the fable in the form of my piece which goes as follows:

0:23 - A - Enter Tortoise
0:46 - B - Enter Hare
1:04 - C - Hare mocks Tortoise
1:20 - D - Enter Fox
1:36 - E - Tortoise & Hare agree to Race
1:58 - F - The Race Ensues !
2:09 - G - Hare tires & falls asleep
2:17 - H - Tortoise hurries
2:34 - I - Tortoise passes Hare
2:51 - J - Tortoise tires
3:02 - K - Fox spots Tortoise
3:13 - L - Hare awakes and hurries
3:30 - M - Tortoise wins!

Let me know what you think!  I welcome your critiques, suggestions and observations!

This piece is so expressive! It's like a complete 180 from the Etude I helped record for you (for my YouTube channel). If you had better samples, this almost might be hard to determine that it is a midi. Great job on the output.

As far as the composition, this is a perfect example of how to write music to represent a situation, and I think the opening pizzicato intro was a great way to start the race.

The beginning section almost sound a little like Tchaikovsky, but then then you get into your own voice immediately afterwards. Love the part where the hare takes a nap. I got lost in the timestamps but I knew immediately that this was nap time. This part here actually sounds a little like Tchaikovsky too, really cool!

Overall, I'm actually impressed by your midi output and rendering. It seems like you are starting to pay more attention to dynamics. And wow, it really makes a tremendous difference in your music output!

Hey Peter,

This piece is so funny to listen with and full of characters and details, and the level of depiction in the music is always not what I can do as I am more used to composing absolute music.

For the introduction it really sets the funny tune of the music with the pizz., and especially that German sixth pizz. and forced fortissimo with no reason at all LoL! I also like how use introduce the accompaniment first before the bassoon melody, like a Bach cantata or the beginning of Bee's Eroica Variations or Mahler's Symphony no.2 or great pieces in general LoL. Bassoon is a great choice for the tortoise! I always find the timbre of it funny in some pieces of music, while it can also be sinister like the tortoise here!

The use of piccolo for the hare is of course great, but what I love most in B section is that you use whole tone scale to depict the quickness and brainlessness of the hare! Whole tone scales provides no definite destination, just like the hare doesn't know what it's doing here! So humorous here! Section C is so funny as your music really creates the image of the hare teasing the tortoise and I really would like to hit that hare!

Very nice counterpoint in section E! The three themes of each of the characters match perfectly here with their own distinctive characteristic even though the tempo is homogenous here. Btw, is the falling chromatic for the hare's theme signifying its defeat and the ascending chromatic for the tortoise, even if it's slow, signify its win?

Section I for me reminds me of the passage in Tcahikovsky's Symphony no.4 with the quick falling semitones, but of course in a very different context:

The ending is nice too with once again the combination of the three themes! Just maybe for me a little bit less coda-like even though you have raised the key to a semitone higher. Maybe adding a scene the hare is crying and tortoise laughing makes the story longer? But nonetheless this is a great piece. Thx for sharing and love to see your new work here Peter!

Henry

22 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

This piece is so funny to listen with and full of characters and details, and the level of depiction in the music is always not what I can do as I am more used to composing absolute music.

You should try writing some programmatic music!  You could try this fable or any of the other competition themes already used!  It's really very fun to do imo.

24 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

For the introduction it really sets the funny tune of the music with the pizz., and especially that German sixth pizz. and forced fortissimo with no reason at all LoL!

Thanks!  I think, since the key here is A minor, a German 6th would be F, A, C, D# which doesn't occur here.  it would be a German 6th if the key was D minor though because the Bb and G# would resolve nicely to A7 or D minor 6/4.  I never thought though that the fortissimo tremolo in the beginning was without reason - I thought it was a good dramaturgical reason to prepare the entrance of the Tortoise (or later on to anticipate the suspense of the beginning of the race).

29 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Btw, is the falling chromatic for the hare's theme signifying its defeat and the ascending chromatic for the tortoise, even if it's slow, signify its win?

I never thought about it that way but I guess it does work like that!  When I wrote the Tortoises' theme I was thinking of how the Tortoises' head slowly peeks out from inside its shell and I came up with the rising chromatic line from that.  When I wrote the Hare's descending chromatic line I was mostly just trying to find the easiest way to depict the Hare's snoring and sleeping (in a kind of cartoonish way).

32 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

The ending is nice too with once again the combination of the three themes! Just maybe for me a little bit less coda-like even though you have raised the key to a semitone higher. Maybe adding a scene the hare is crying and tortoise laughing makes the story longer?

LoL - any ideas on how to depict the Hare's crying musically?  And the Tortoise seems too dignified a character to laugh at the Hare's misfortune - it's the Hare that laughs at the Tortoise because it's so conceited and demeaning.  But that's just my take on the characters.  Thanks for your review Henry!

Peter

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

You should try writing some programmatic music!  You could try this fable or any of the other competition themes already used!  It's really very fun to do imo.

Haha maybe I will write one in the future, but that's not my interest now.

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

LoL - any ideas on how to depict the Hare's crying musically?  And the Tortoise seems too dignified a character to laugh at the Hare's misfortune - it's the Hare that laughs at the Tortoise because it's so conceited and demeaning.  But that's just my take on the characters.

Maybe the piccolo uses flutter tone to symbolize the hare's growling and shrieking after the defeat? And then the piccolo falls down to reach the low D to admit the defeat or so. The tortoise laughing may be presented just with repeated notes of the bassoon in its lowest register since it will be the loudest and most sinister haha.

I always imagined the story when I was young that ends up with the tortoise pretending it was slow to fool the hare, or despite the tortoise giving 200% energy the hare easily defeats it to fool the tortoise and show how futile the tortoise's struggle is, just like an Existentialism story like the Sisyphus. 

Your best work to date! (to me.) All you needed was a little production value and boom! Congrats on an amazing piece man.