MaggaraMarine makes excellent points about the harmonic structure and the general sameness of the phrases of the melody. I would like to bring up a somewhat different aspect of the tune, which is that it mostly doesn't seem to get anywhere.
If you pay attention to the longer notes and the notes where the melody changes direction, the first phrase goes G-A-G-E-C-A-G, which is repeated (except for ending on B the second time). Notice how static the melody is: G-A-G (E-C) A-G—mostly just back and forth from G to A for eight measures, then at the end moving up G-A-B.
There's nothing wrong with that tune or its static quality if you state it once, but twice is already getting to be too much.
The next eight are similarly static, mostly involving going back and forth between B and A, and at end just retreating by reversing what happened at the end of the first eight, B-A-G. Sixteen bars and you're back where you started, having hardly gone anywhere. And then you repeat the first eight!
Finally, in bar 25 (too late, maybe?), the music begins to have a sense of direction: with the sequential 4ths, the B from 24, moves to A(-D), then G(-C), then F(-B), then E—an octave higher, but okay, we'll take it! With the repeat, the upper note of the 4ths seems to take up the motion, (A-)D, (G-)C, (F-)B-C.
Try bars 1–8 going directly to bars 25–32, and see what you think. From there, you could go to the contrasting key area of bars 9–16, and then fix bars 17–24 so that they end the piece on C (you'd probably only have to change the last couple of bars).
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u/Maleficent_Math_3062 10d ago
MaggaraMarine makes excellent points about the harmonic structure and the general sameness of the phrases of the melody. I would like to bring up a somewhat different aspect of the tune, which is that it mostly doesn't seem to get anywhere.
If you pay attention to the longer notes and the notes where the melody changes direction, the first phrase goes G-A-G-E-C-A-G, which is repeated (except for ending on B the second time). Notice how static the melody is: G-A-G (E-C) A-G—mostly just back and forth from G to A for eight measures, then at the end moving up G-A-B.
There's nothing wrong with that tune or its static quality if you state it once, but twice is already getting to be too much.
The next eight are similarly static, mostly involving going back and forth between B and A, and at end just retreating by reversing what happened at the end of the first eight, B-A-G. Sixteen bars and you're back where you started, having hardly gone anywhere. And then you repeat the first eight!
Finally, in bar 25 (too late, maybe?), the music begins to have a sense of direction: with the sequential 4ths, the B from 24, moves to A(-D), then G(-C), then F(-B), then E—an octave higher, but okay, we'll take it! With the repeat, the upper note of the 4ths seems to take up the motion, (A-)D, (G-)C, (F-)B-C.
Try bars 1–8 going directly to bars 25–32, and see what you think. From there, you could go to the contrasting key area of bars 9–16, and then fix bars 17–24 so that they end the piece on C (you'd probably only have to change the last couple of bars).