Count The Ways

March 6, 2009 by zath · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Music by zath 

Last term I submitted a solo viola piece in three movements and was 1 of 4 entrants accepted into a composers competition at my school.  The brief was to write a new piece for a specific instrumentation (fl cl ob bsn f.hn tpt perc vln1 vln2 vcl1 vcl2 cb), use a melody or motive from a piece of music written before 1685, and make sure it ended up four minutes or shorter.

[SND] Count_the_Ways.mp3 06-Mar-2009 21:34 8.5M

The piece was written in 6/4 (because it had bits with a 6/8 feel and other bits with a 3/4 feel), so it seemed best to write it so that either division of the beat could be played… but that meant conducting it in 6 and it ended up slower than written (it also had some tricky parts).

But it turned out pretty well.  I didn’t WIN, but that’s cool because we were told all four of us wrote very respectable pieces. :)

It’s exciting to have a piece performed by a traditional ensemble!

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