Kat's Casting - "Will I graduate from University?"

I have written another piece for my friend Kat's Casting!  This time Kat asked the Muzoracle if she will graduate from a 4-year university.  (Muzoracle is a storytelling/divination tool similar to the Tarot card deck, but with cards with musical concepts and 12-sided Musician's dice and Solfege dice.)

My interpretation of the cards and dice are displayed below.  Since the first card drawn was a Conductor of Percussion card, I chose to use Piano, an instrument that Kat likes.  The second card drawn was a Major 7th of Woodwinds, so I chose Clarinet, an instrument that Kat used to play.  And finally the third card drawn was an Octave of Voices card, so I chose a solo Soprano singer.  If you'd like to find out more about Muzoracle and how castings are interpreted go here:  https://muzoracle.net/

This short musical interpretation of Kat's Casting is about a minute and a half long.  Since the black 12-sided Musician's Die landed on F, the piece is in the key of F major.  I created the following melodic/harmonic underdrawing guided by the cards and dice.  The first solfege die landed on Ti and the card indicated a percussion instrument - in this case, Piano.  So I had the Piano start solo on an E (in the left hand).  Then I had the Clarinet and Soprano enter on an anacrusis into a melody that uses E, Db, C, and B.  Since the interval of a Minor 2nd is prominent in the casting, I decided to transpose the whole melodic/harmonic underdrawing down a Minor 2nd giving me access to tones needed to create a V7 of F.  I then used that dominant to bring the piece into F major and repeat the melodies and harmonies at the pitch level of F before repeating the piece and ending on an F7 #11 chord.  I also liberally used accelerandi and ritardandi, guided by the accelerando/ritardando card in the 1st position.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!  And I hope you enjoy listening to this short chamber work I wrote to represent Kat's Casting.  Comments, critiques, suggestions, or observations are of course, always welcome.  Thanks for listening!

So far this is one of my favorites that you have done. The trio work well together, and this is certainly one of the most unique castings you've composed. I can see this being converted to just a piano, if you ever wanted to create an Etude out of this. It would be fun to play and listen to, and potentially falls into that Etude category. And like always, your recordings are getting really, really good.

On 11/15/2025 at 7:41 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

This time Kat asked the Muzoracle if she will graduate from a 4-year university.

Judging by the music, I'd say no lol

Aside from that, the music is really cool! The delay effect is haunting, and you've once again woven randomness into a great piece of music. Nice work there Peter