Persichetti Exercise 8 - 8 for Piano

It's been a while since I've composed anything, so I felt like getting back into doing some Persichetti composition prompts. I am now on Chapter 8 of Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" which is titled "Compound and Mirror Harmony". The particular prompt for this piano piece was "8. Write an opening section of a two-part piece for the piano employing two symmetrically invertible scales. The mirror writing should be kept strict throughout." So I tried to do just that with this ~1 minute long piano piece. I tried my best to make an actual piece of music rather than an exercise, but let me know how I did! I'd appreciate any of your comments, critiques, suggestions or observations! Thanks for listening!

Here's the form of the piece:

A - Right Hand - C Mixolydian, Left Hand - C Aeolian
B - Right Hand - C Ionian, Left Hand - C Phrygian
A

Persichetti Exercise 8 - 8 Score.pdf

Hey Peter,

This bitonal piece sounds really funny, it sounds like a parody of a march! It's like someone saying "look at how serious I am!" by making himself 200% serious which makes him 500% ridiculous lol

Henry

Hello @PeterthePapercomPoser,

this next Persichetti exercise was again a great fun.

I just had to checkout what „symmetrically invertable scale“ means. Yes, it is indeed the case that the pairs you’ve chosen share the same order of whole-tone steps and half-tone steps between the different scale degrees, the one in normal order and the other one in reverse one!

C Mixolydian:

C 1 D 1 E ½ F 1 G 1 A ½ Bb 1 C

C Aeolian (aka C natural minor) - reversed

C 1 Bb 1 Ab ½ G 1 F 1 Eb ½ D 1 C

C Ionian (aka C major)

C 1 D 1 E ½ F 1 G 1 A 1 B ½ C

C Phrygian – reversed

C 1 Bb 1 Ab ½ G 1 F 1 Eb 1 Db ½ C

Another thing is mirroring, that is whenever the left hand plays the melody/chords upwards, the right hand does the exact opposite. At some points, you have made some exceptions from the strong mirroring, introducing octave-wise steps or leaps which is – in my opinion – absolute correct and does not violate the intention of the prompt, but rather is a good device to make „an actual piece of music rather than an exercise“.

Having different key signatures in the right and left hand scores is surely unusual, but makes the score looking very interesting, together with the meter changes, applying the odd one 5/4.

How does it sound? Modern, ethereal, but pleasant and by no means “too atonal.” I can’t imagine this kind of exercise being expanded into a piece—say—7 minutes long. But I’d very much like to see passages based on this idea in a “real” piece of music, such as a prelude, combined with passages featuring more functional harmony and a texture that differs between the two hands to create variety.

Thanks for sharing—it’s a very humorous and at the same time profound exercise, and perhaps an inspiration for one of my next pieces.