This category contains articles that analyse musical works, discussing what they can teach us as composers, orchestrators and arrangers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RYl4GcKe5Y&ab_channel=AnyOldMusic Today, I thought we’d take a look at a piece that captured my eye, because it was recently uploaded by Cmaj7 as a score video, to YouTube, and score, to IMSLP. The piece is the opening Nocturne movement from Scènes de la Fôret (Forest Scenes) by French composer, Mélanie Bonis. A composer with a […]
Nocturne from Scénes de la Fôret – Mélanie Bonis Read More »
Late in 1932, Sergei Prokofiev was approached by the Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) based film studio Belgoskino Studios and commissioned to score their upcoming film Lieutenant Kijé. To be produced and released in 1933, it came at a time where Prokofiev, who lived in Paris and had been away from his native country for nearly a
Troika from Lieutenant Kijé (suite) (1934) – Sergei Prokofiev Read More »
A nifty way in which Bach modulates, particularly from a minor to a major mode, is by simply pivoting around the tonic of the previous minor key. In the final movement “Badinerie”, of his Orchestral Suite No. 3, for instance, he will often give the tonic chord a cape, turning it into a super-tonic chord
It’s easy, when composing for something like a string orchestra to simply think of it as 5-parts: the 1st Violins, 2nd Violins, Violas, Cellos and Double Basses. Yet, these sections of a string orchestra are made up of several players. In his composition Dives and Lazarus, Vaughan Williams experiments with this fact, doubling solo lines,
https://youtu.be/2Rtlqm0nSU4 If someone were to ask me what my favourite film was, I think I would be hard-pressed to answer with something other than 2010’s How to Train Your Dragon. The reasoning is vast should reason be required for doing something like declaring a favourite film. However, in one sense, my choice boils down to how
In their 1976 composition, Für Alina, for solo piano, Arvo Pärt introduced the world to his algorithmic technique, tintinnabuli. At first glance, the technique’s use in Für Alina looks similar to a two-part first-species counterpoint exercise. On closer inspection, however, one can see the two voices move in similar or oblique motion. Using two types
Arvo Pärt – Für Alina (Bitesize Music Composition Analysis) Read More »
In posthumously arranging Bizet’s Farandole [L’Arlesienne Suite No. 2], Ernest Guiraud takes half of the primary theme, Le Marche de Rois, and exposes it twice in D-minor. First, the theme is heard in homophonic texture, then a two-part canon. Modulating to the parallel D-major, Guiraud introduces part of the farandole melody, gradually increasing its intensity in the
In his 1959 Twilight Zone score, for the episode “Walking Distance”, Bernard Herrmann underscores protagonist Martin Sloan’s return to his childhood hometown. Mind-bending, Sloan slowly realises he has also travelled back in time, to when he was a child. Pursuing his child self, and meeting his parents, who are a similar age to adult Sloan,
George Friedrich Handel’s “Overture” to the Royal Fireworks Music boasts a majestic stately opening that presents a melody and homophonic texture. Repeating this melody immediately in a similar form, Handel provides a subtle but poignant reharmonisation of the melody. Where the first statement presents more triadic harmony, the second adds more extensions or tension notes
Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony, nicknamed “Little Russian”, opens with a melody presented on its own on solo french horn. Tchaikovsky then uses this melody as his only material for the opening three to four minutes, presenting it in three full re orchestrated forms, and then several fragmented forms. The first full version sees bassoons take up