Thursday, August 1, 2013

13.) Dialogues July 30, 2013


Dialogues is a two voice piece which utilizes Messiaen's fifth mode of limited transposition.  The upper voices uses one transposition [B C Db F Gb G], while the lower uses another [D Eb E Ab A Bb].  Combined they include every note of the chromatic scale.  The mode is interesting in theory, but using it was not very easy.  This one felt limiting, and I grew tired of my limited choices quickly.  I felt like I was overusing all of the pitches, always returning to the same ones.  Happily, the juxtaposition of two voices with two different transpositions seems to obscure that feeling in the final result.  Also, I welcome challenges like this and hope that by dealing with some of these limitations I will be pushed into new territory and grow as a composer and musician.

Rhythmically, Dialogues features a superimposition of structures.  The rhythm of the top voice repeats after five measures, while the rhythm of the bottom voice repeats after three.  The piece is fifteen measures in total because in that time all superimpositions are realized within those patterns.  The sixteenth measure would be rhythmically the same as the first.  

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