Enharmonic Perpetual Canon No. 2 for Choir and Orchestra.

Based on the same core concept as the last two canons, this one took roughly under four hours to complete (as time seems to fly once I finally get inspired) and is intended to incapsulate the essential technique employed in these more recent compositions with a greater measure of brevity and conciseness involved, for perhaps three minutes of the same nonstop iterations (as was the case in the previous one) may have turned out quite a bit too repetitive, I regret.

YouTube video link: 

Hi @Fugax Contrapunctus!

I like how you reinterpret the subject of the canon in the choir to allow you to fit in more syllables - that worked out quite well!  And the whole canon has a nice structure that is corroborated by the orchestration where every time the canon repeats (returns back to its original key) a new group of instruments (woodwinds) or choir is added to bring the repetition into more of a high relief.  It's a joy to listen to!  Also - did you mean the Oboe 2 part to be played by English Horn?  It seems to be too low for Oboe.  And a very nice rounded off ending.  Thanks for sharing!

The low A is not present on the Oboe .... You can score it for Oboe D'Amore which has a low A in the scale or as been said English Horn.

Maark

On 9/10/2025 at 5:12 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

[...] Also - did you mean the Oboe 2 part to be played by English Horn? It seems to be too low for Oboe. Thanks for sharing!

20 hours ago, MJFOBOE said:

The low A is not present on the Oboe .... You can score it for Oboe D'Amore which has a low A in the scale or as been said English Horn. [...]

Corrections have been made, both on this regard and the counterpoint of the coda. Thank you both kindly for pointing it out.

Hi ... the English Horn is in F it is not a C instrument.  Did you transpose the part?

As written  it cannot be played ... the English is scaled to a low Bb similarly to the Oboe.

Mark

I actually quite like the strength of the motif for this minute and a half. It just really makes me want a B section. Often times in the renaissance, when there was a crazy polyphonic repetitions like this, they would do 1 of 3 things. Either have another polyphonic section in a different mode, have a more declamatory section of text, which would often be in a "double choir" setting which was back and forth between two homophonic sections, or an outright homophonic section. I think each of these would work really well. 

Heres an example of Lotti moving from a incredible thick reptitive canon-like polyphonity into a triple-ish choir: https://youtu.be/OZ9dXLmRlpo?si=LaAY263rsR4sFO6x
 

And Gesualdo into a more homophonic style: https://youtu.be/TBC-45-FfVQ?si=Kmqmee2Ldr9aPlYU&t=131
 

And most was just more polyphony.