Ha! It has once again been a while since I have been back on my webpage doing anything, but I’m hoping to change that this Fall. Couple of personal things, my position at Duquesne as a full time professor seems secure and I have taken on a part time church job at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Highland Park. The latter position just began this month of September as I was only the interim. In fact, I was interim for a year and half, which is a long time, but not Widor length.
I’m back with another insight into my Aria with Nine Variations; the third titled “Ostinato.” Obviously, there is an ostinato, or repeating figure, in the piano part. It was taken from the final notes from the previous movement titled Pattern. The final pitches were created using a plugin called Krush: without getting too technical, the pitches were created from the harmonics of the notes and chords being compressed. Rather than use some tool to help discern the exact pitches, I used my ears, which is why the piano plays those pitches at the end of the 2nd Variation; in ascending order: C, D, F#, and B.
Two things about this movement, the first, is that formally the movement should not go general consonance to dissonance. The Aria and first two Variations have done that. Which leads to the second formal question, then where should the piece go? In the planning or composing vs. improvising-as-I-go, this one fits somewhere in between. The Ostinato offered the opportunity to change things up a little bit by also including an antiphonal response to the pitches from the previous movement. Put simply the pitches also allowed me to also have the antiphony switch between a major and minor tonality.
Second, I really wanted a chance to do something more with the piano: those two antiphonal synths are broken by when the Left Hand of the piano comes into the texture. And what seemed to me to be an obvious choice, they combine at the end to set up the next movement with a low G on the bass synth. One small note: like much music made on DAW, I had the opportunity to quantize that Right Hand ostinato and I’m here to admit that I did not. As a seasoned keyboard player, it only took two takes to get the feel of playing the same thing for five minutes straight. Enjoy and see you all soon for the next post!