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.

7 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

The fact that each part has been harmonised in thirds and sixths gives it a very familiar smoothness (common in tonal music).

Yeah I think this was really interesting. For me I felt like it was really easy to distinguish the two parts, as my ear could effortlessly listen back and forth between them. It didn't feel like oil and water like a lot of bitonal stuff I've heard, but rather the two parts worked much better than what I anticipated.

Very cool Peter, I'm interested to hear how all your studies acquiesce into larger works. Maybe something along the lines of blending two themes together at the end of a sonata or something.

This is super cool! I love the Persichetti book and have done a lot of these exercises in the past. Really nicely done. I personally think you did a great job with the inverted canon - very impressive to keep it in pure canon the entire piece. I wonder that if expanded, it would be interesting to change the distance of the canon the same time you change the modes used. The effect of having multiple articulations (slurred to staccato eighth notes) happening simultaneously is a fun touch.

1 minute ago, JDevorMusic said:

This is super cool! I love the Persichetti book and have done a lot of these exercises in the past. Really nicely done. I personally think you did a great job with the inverted canon - very impressive to keep it in pure canon the entire piece. I wonder that if expanded, it would be interesting to change the distance of the canon the same time you change the modes used. The effect of having multiple articulations (slurred to staccato eighth notes) happening simultaneously is a fun touch.

Thanks! Glad to hear another potential working on these prompts besides just me and @Luis Hernández ! I don't know if I'll be looking to expand pre-existing pieces that I wrote based on the Persichetti exercises. I think once I sift through the whole book and do exercises from every chapter, I will start the book again at the beginning and comb the exercises for potential prompts that could be utilized to write longer, more substantial works. I still don't know if these exercises are conducive to longer form works honestly. But I am also amassing my own google doc with prompt ideas inspired by these that I could use in the future to write more music, so who knows!

Thanks for your comment!