@yo' i see... so it is really a pseudo modulation then... i have seen some contemporary Christian songs which modulate up one third and back (the new key was less than 8 bars). Mostly written by Don Moen, and the pivot chord is always VI maj.
@Patrx2 I really like your Canzona francese. It came on in my soundcloud feed because I favorited it and I thought it was Bach initially. Beautiful piece!
@StanShunpike Thanks. I need to finish it. That last section should combine the two forms of the subject (the original 4/4 of the first section and the 3/4 version of the middle section) with the third section's 12/8 subject (which is a variant of the first section's countersubject) - they all fit together nicely.
Do you find you can compose at a steady rate or are you spontaneous? I heard Schubert would sit down at a table and write a piece in one sitting. I personally am very fluky. I will work on a piece and then it can sit around for months, with no progress. And then suddenly I finish it. Or in contrast, last night I wrote a piece in 1.5 hrs.
Obviously it depends on complexity.
The one I wrote last night had repetitive elements. That's usually the only way to write a piece that quickly. But as Debussy says, pleasure is the only measure.
@StanShunpike I am slow. I think the fastest I ever wrote something was a little under a week, and I wasn't faced with interruptions for a change (the Prelude in F, maybe the Ricercare). If I am interrupted, it is hard to pick something up again until it becomes ripe again: the Fugue in B♭ languished for about 10+ years until I picked it up again last year, and then it went very quickly.
lol well, I'm impatient. My fastest is 40min. And really, even when I take longer, it isn't because I'm going slowly, it's usually because I'm stuck and don't have an idea. Once, I have an idea, I move quickly. So I'm having to train myself to slow down.
@StanShunpike Some people are very quick. I heard a description of Schoenberg writing in the kitchen of the Gerhard household in Barcelona, carrying on conversations with his wife and Mrs. Gerhard while he did so: "It was like he was writing a letter." Schoenberg, however, had notorious difficulties picking a work up again if he was interrupted.
@Patrx2 that's amazing. I don't think I could talk and do it. I tried doing it by hand and its not all that different. That's interesting he couldn't pick it back up. I wonder why.
@StanShunpike Probably because he wrote at white heat or not at all. I suspect he had problems continuing after interruptions for similar reasons to my own: his music was quite polyphonic, and in such cases, the voice leading can dictate how the music continues.
If the flow is broken, it is hard to remember exactly where you were taking something; you remember the general idea, sure, but exactly how you were going to continue can be lost, and that requires you to get back into the right "head space".
So is polyphonic music somehow different from just creating a one line melody in that regard? Usually I just write one part on top of another and adjust as needed. Is that different from how you compose?
@StanShunpike Froberger, Sweelinck, Scheidt, Cabezón, some of the Elizabethan/Jacobean composers (Byrd, and some of John Bull's stuff can be amazing - In nomine IX from the Fitzwilliam book is amazing).
@StanShunpike Mine are definitely not one-liners. I pay a lot of attention to "floor and ceiling", to be sure, but there are more than a few times when, if you were to omit one of the lines, the rhythm would fall apart.
Nope, *In nomine IX* is Bull's and it's quite long, about 7 minutes long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjcn88s_2mU
I have an odd problem. I can do the one liner approach fine. But when I try to write chord progressions, I can only do ones where all my notes are the same length. It sounds best with strings. Otherwise, I haven't had much success writing multiple parts at once.
The end of in nomine IX is a bit more energetic. Interesting. I had not heard of Bull
So you write all your lines simultaneously rather than separately?
@StanShunpike Even more to the fact that I hear a kind of commentary on everything - duets, trios, quartets and more all over the place. I think my most characteristic texture is a duo between two of the voices with the others adding support and interjections.
