Monday, December 05, 2016

Diabelli Project 136 - String Orchestra

The Diabelli Project is about offering my weekly flash-composition sketches freely to all. Like Antonio Diabelli's theme, these sketches aren't great music. But perhaps (as in Diabelli's case) there's a Beethoven out there who can do great things with them.

The rules for Diabelli Project flash compositions are simple: within the allotted ten-minute span spontaneously compose, and stop when time runs out. Before I make a fair copy of the sketch for posting to the blog, I'll play through what I wrote to make sure it's intelligible. I try to keep corrections to a minimum and edits even more so. The goal is to document what happened in that ten minutes without refining it afterward (that's a different project).

In this case, I did make one editorial decision after the fact. I did conceive of this as a string orchestra piece, with the viola section getting the solo. As I was making the fair copy, I had second thoughts. The melody is supposed to be freely expressive, something that might be problematic for a string section.

No, that's not an oblique viola joke -- I'd feel the same if the melody had been given to the first violin. So I made a slight edit and made the viola melody a solo. It may be bending the "rules," but it just seems right.





As always, you can use any or all of the posted Diabelli Project sketches as you wish for free. Just be sure to share the results. I'm always curious to see what direction someone else can take this material.

No comments:

Post a Comment