I finished the woodwind ensemble piece for the competition. It's not quite as long as I wanted it to be, but with what I wrote I think it worked out the length it ended up. If I had added repeats I think it would have been overkill.
I went the theme of hollowearth, the music being a reflection of what I think music down there would be like (I don't really think it is real, although it would be amazing). I thought: "well if there really was an ancient civilization under the Earth's crust, what would it sound like?" I thought of the music of India, a style rich in melodic ideas yet, to the western ear, lacking in the realm of harmony. That being a source of inspiration I decided to have a drone -like, somewhat static harmony; the most minimal harmonic vocabulary I think I've ever used in a piece.
Being a submission for a competition I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not but oh well.
The harmony is also strange in the fact that I used chords built upside down, in descending thirds. All of the melodic and harmonic comes from the NOT theoretical system of under-tones (there is a lot of people who think they do not exist, I disagree). The result ends up being the Phyrgian mode, however the way it is used is completely different.
For example: in the Phrygian mode the tonic is C-Eb-G, the system I used the tonic is C-Ab-F (descending).
The title, if anyone is curious, comes from the title of the "biography" of Olaf Jansen, a sailor who supposedly spent two years living with the inhabitants of the hollow earth.
That, I believe, about sums it up, so here is a very terrible midi rendition of the piece.
Bookmark this post with:
