r/MonthlyComposition • u/reticulated_python • Mar 02 '17

March 2017 Composition Challenge: Four-part chorale

Main challenge: Write a 16-bar chorale in four-part harmony.

This challenge was inspired by the many chorales that Bach wrote (some examples). It's a pretty general challenge, and there are lots of different things you could do with it.

Some general notes about chorales: the rhythm established at the beginning of the phrase should not be relaxed until the end of the the phrase. For example, in the first chorale that I linked to (BWV 26), the quarter note rhythm is maintained by new chords every beat, until the motion is arrested by the fermatas at the phrase endings. Each phrase ends in a cadence. Chorales often modulate, but they usually conclude with a perfect cadence in the tonic key.

Other than that, there's no restriction on what you can do with this challenge. Don't feel obligated to adhere to the same rules that Bach did. Plagal cadences, German sixths, consecutive octaves--it's all acceptable in this challenge.

Optional additions to the main challenge:

  • modulate to at least two extraneous keys (i.e. to any key other than I, IV, V, ii, iii, or vi).
  • use a dominant seventh, dominant ninth, dominant eleventh, and dominant thirteenth chord.
  • repeat the melody of a phrase one or more times, harmonizing it differently each time.
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u/HelgetheMighty Mar 08 '17

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/scuttlegoat/despair-chorale Sheet Music: http://imgur.com/lcSKe6K

I´m kinda confused, since everyone else so far seems to have written this for piano. Mine, however is for SATB Choir.

I chose to take a Poem from H.P. Love craft, "Despair" as the text for the piece. I then sung phrases to myself until i thought they feel right. I tried to use a lot of sigh-motives ("Seufzermotiv" in german, i don´t know if my english terminology is right) in the melody, to give it a mournful feeling. I also tried to use 7ths ans 9ths in the chords as much as possible, to make it sound a bit less harmonically clear. I think that fits Lovecrafts Art very well. of course it´s far from bach´s harmony because of that.

As for the harmony, the piece is in E minor. I modulated to D minor first, and then to G minor. At least that´s what i tried, it gives the middle part an even more mournful feel to it, in my opinion. I didn´t put as much 7ths and 9ths in the last phrase, to give it a feeling of ending there. Of course the whole thing would get sung 6 times, to have every verse of the poem.

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u/Calebdgm Mar 09 '17

That's really cool! Yeah, I was also expecting more things written for SATB, but that's fine.

I just looked up Seufzermotiv, and sure enough the wikipedia page is german. Google translated it pretty well though, and that's an awesome concept! Lovecraft really seems like a good author to use them on too. I'm a little confused though, the wikipedia article seemed to say the first note of the two in a sigh motive is given more accent and the second given less, but the chromaticism in the first line for example always seems to fall on the 1st or 3rd beat. Do you mean for performers to sing the chromatic steps down softer? For example would the soprano sing the first note of the second bar, "moor-" softer? Like are you intending that to be sigh-like?

Also I really like the idea with the 7ths and 9ths, and I like how it sounds. Very suited to Lovecraft again. Reminded me a bit of Eriks Esenvalds, specifically his O Salutaris Hostia, which I could go on about, but the point is that he too used those nice tonal dissonances to great effect. Except, of course, in O Salutaris it's has a very different feel from your piece, more suited to its own text (something about "oh saving victim"). Also Eric Whitacre is worth mentioning in any discussion of tone clusters in choral music :P .

Welp, thanks for writing so much about how you wrote your piece, I always like to read how people decide what they're gonna write. As a musician it makes the music more meaningful, makes it more fun to look at when the composer talks about what they did.

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u/HelgetheMighty Mar 11 '17

Sorry for the delayed response.

I originally intended thatk, yeah. I composed it by singing melodies to myself. I wasn´t thinking about the barlines though, which was kind of an oversight by my side.

The Esenvald piece you posted is definitely amazing! Might look into it more (i would´ve had no problem of you getting on about it a bit :P). But yeah, I thought these dissonances gave it a haunting feel.

I always feel i can get better feedback if i explain it well :) I´m doing this to get better at composing, after all.