10 Levels of Harmony: A Brahms Lullaby

I want to experiment with a 10 levels of harmony style video on YouTube. And I thought to myself, maybe we can turn this into a challenge? The idea is to take the simple melody of Brahms' lullaby, and test out your harmonization skills to it. Since I am aiming for 10 levels, you are free to submit up to 2 or even 3 variations for this challenge. Simple harmony could be categorized as all notes that are within the key. Medium harmony would be basic key changing (notes that are related to the key) and complex harmony would be, extreme rule breaking, unusual combinations, combinations well out of key. And if we go extreme, this would be your atonal territory.

Keep in mind that I need progressive examples. So it is OK to write simplistic harmony! However if you are feeling adventurous, I need those examples too. I will be taking all of your submissions, and rating them from least to most complex. There's no need to be offended by these ratings. I'm asking for these levels, and I may bring in the judges to help me. Then I will make a fun YouTube video to demonstrate that even the most basic melody, can be transformed by the usage of simple to complex harmony in music!

Everyone who participates, is opt in to being on YouTube. Not a big deal, you still own all copyrights to your music.

so anyway I'm not sure if I have complicated things non-harmonically with these 2 variations I whipped up tonight, but hopefully there will be approaches both simpler and more complex than these, see if these ideas fit
pcc variations brahms lullaby.pdf

Edited January 12, 20242 yr by PCC

Thank you for your submission. These are quite good for something you've done in one night! Your first variation is more complex than your second variation. But since there are no other submissions yet, you get spots 1 and 2 so far!

Just for the people out there, less harmonically complex does not mean musically inferior, like OP said simple ones can do great too

Do the variations have to be written for piano or keyboard, or would other instruments be also welcome? Also, is there a specific deadline?

@luderart No it doesn't have to be piano. As long as there is harmony involved, you can use whatever instrumentation you'd like. There's no deadline, I'm just going to wait on this challenge, until we have a decent number of people who are interested in doing it. My goal is to demonstrate 10 levels of harmony, but we'll see if we get there.

Here's my submission

It's harmonically simple which made for easy application of the stretto-like things, and I also feel like the simple harmony made the last chord stand out better.  I think I got the idea for the figure that appears here from one of Byrd's variations in his setting of "The Hunt's Up", which is not a lullaby but a wake-up call, so kind of ironic there (and you could find the hunt's up on my youtube channel if interested.)

Edited January 17, 20242 yr by gaspard

Here are my two variations! Since no one is bothering to state the theme at the beginning, I too neglected to do so. I guess these variations will occupy the slots meant for the harmonically simpler ones!

Thank you everyone so far for your submissions! Let's keep them coming!

@Thatguy v2.0

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu

@PeterthePapercomPoser

@Omicronrg9

@CashComposer

@Gwendolyn Przyjazna

Feel free to tag more people who you feel may want to join! The examples don't have to be that long. 30 seconds to a few minutes is fine.

Thank you for including me on this thread!

———

@Quinn

@Theodore Servin

@Ivan1791 (Koskinen’s Lullaby? 😏)

@expert21

@ComposedBySam

1 hour ago, chopin said:

Thank you everyone so far for your submissions! Let's keep them coming!

@Thatguy v2.0

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu

@PeterthePapercomPoser

@Omicronrg9

@CashComposer

@Gwendolyn Przyjazna

Feel free to tag more people who you feel may want to join! The examples don't have to be that long. 30 seconds to a few minutes is fine.

 

Edited January 18, 20242 yr by Gwendolyn Przyjazna

here’s my other variation.  It’s supposed to be in a “space battle” style and is definitely supposed to be orchestrated but as i haven’t done any orchestrating in quite a while i don’t feel confident about doing it myself.  

Thought I'd try this out with that progression i made. THIS IS VERY BAD PROBABLY BUT I TRIED.Lullaby Variation.pdf

Here is my little variation^^

Brahms lullaby work Ldb.pdf

Bonus orchestration

The string voicings are lovely and uplifting! I particularly liked the moment at 0:21.

Thank you for sharing!
 

On 1/23/2024 at 1:46 PM, Louis dB said:

 

 

 

Bonus orchestration

MP3

 

 

Play / pause

• Lovely lullaby

0:13

 

 

0:32

volume

 

> next

menu

 

Lovely lullaby

 

> next

Edited January 29, 20242 yr by Gwendolyn Przyjazna

It has been long since I write something concrete. Shall take it as a spark of hope and thank you for the challenge. Please count me in.

Here I submit my variations (I took it too seriously)

Wiegenlied variations.pdf

ok Beethoven and your Diabelli variations 😂

My submission here

https://soundcloud.com/mythomorphic/reharmonization-on-brahms-lullaby-tour-1/s-HHLaakYn7lD?si=658a8fd9af80420a9bbebcc7e47ba569&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

I admit there are some Mahler ideas in it

On 2/12/2024 at 4:31 AM, Nazariy said:

Here I submit my variations (I took it too seriously)

Wiegenlied variations.pdf 363.96 kB · 5 downloads

PDF

• Wiegenlied variations

Hi, Nazariy! Very elegant. 5:02 was an interesting section; so much motion and character. And I really like the illustration you used in the video.

Edited February 14, 20242 yr by Gwendolyn Przyjazna

I forgot to share a link to my contribution to this challenge: 

Although, it is an orchestration of @gaspard's variation above ^^ I hope it will still be featured in @chopin's video.

@HoYin Cheung Can you attach the mp3 of your submission so that I can download it? Thanks!

19 hours ago, chopin said:

@HoYin Cheung Can you attach the mp3 of your submission so that I can download it? Thanks!

 

For your reference.