Persichetti Exercise 8 - 7 for Double Reed Quartet

I've taken to another exercise from Chapter 8 of Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" - "Compound and Mirror Harmony". This time I've chosen Exercise 7 - "Move a chamber group through several mirror chords where the reflective harmony is generated by the same tone and by different tones." In this case he is referring to using symmetrically invertible scales just like in Exercise 8 which I already did. In that exercise I built the respective mirror scales on the same tone (C) so in this exercise I sought to build the mirror scales on different tones only. I also created an inverted canon at a 10th and a quarter note between the Oboes and Bassoons. I used the following chart from the book to simplify the exercise for myself (so I used E Mixolydian in the Oboes and C Aeolian in the Bassoons). At one point I switch the Oboes to Ionian and Bassoons to Phrygian, just like in Exercise 8, but this isn't accompanied by key signature changes.

Thanks for reading and for listening! I would appreciate any of your suggestions, comments, critiques or observations!

Persichetti Exercise 8 - 7.pdf

Hey Peter!

In fact I find it really melodious even it’s bitonal. The canonic imitation doesn’t sound mechanical to me, which is good job. In fact I’m going to use some bitonal treatment of your theme in my new work working so stay tuned haha.

Henry

Hello

A lovely piece.

One of the key lessons I took away from this ESSENTIAL book by Persichetti is that if you use a system – that is, if you are consistent with a musical organisation, whatever that may be – the result depends solely on each individual’s skill and artistry, just as it would if you were composing tonal music.

I think it’s a great decision here to have divided the timbres for each mode-scale. As well as the different registers.

The fact that each part has been harmonised in thirds and sixths gives it a very familiar smoothness (common in tonal music). Yet these modes lend themselves perfectly to fourth-based harmony.