Thursday, January 31, 2008

7 Jan 2008, #4. Ophelia - 9m27s

First, I want to say that this might be my favorite yet. It has a wonderful arc, and a lovely, swirling, sad feeling.

As with "Miranda," I came into this piece knowing the first few measures. I composed a piece a few years ago that started very similarly, with repeated downward arpeggios, with the same inversion of a major triad for the first chord. That piece had quintuplet arpeggios, so I thought I'd try quadruplets for this one. Both pieces are about changing one note at a time, very slowly moving through a harmonic spectrum. (Using arpeggios instead of block chords gives them, paradoxically, both more movement and a more placid feeling, because there are many more notes per second, but they all run together so that the sound does not decay unless I let it.)

In this piece especially, I really just followed my fingers.

I spend the first 6 minutes almost completely above middle C, and the drop down is a relief, almost a comfort although the harmony is quite unsettled. The relief doesn't last long. This section (the last 3:35) feels utterly connected to the first six minutes, but it's completely different. I am no longer wandering from harmony to harmony; I've found my chord progression, and settle in to embellish and exhaust it. You could think of the last two or so minutes as one long Picardy third.




download (option-click for Mac users, right-click and save for PC users)
Recorded on January 7th, 2008, at Peace Church of the Brethren, in Portland, OR, with a Zoom H4 Digital Recorder. Edited with Audacity music software.

1 comment:

Sylvia said...

Hey Chris--I know I haven't been commenting, but I am enjoying these pieces so much. It's always a pleasure to hear new work from you. I have this project on my podcast subscriptions so my swiss-cheese brain won't miss updates. "Ophelia" is probably my favorite of this year so far.