Sunday, February 22, 2015

Piano Trio Update

I have begun to compose my Piano Trio on Dante's Inferno since the last post, and I am pleased with it thus far. I presented the beginning/opening section in seminar class and I received positive feedback from the class. They liked the contrast in texture and sound in the section and the overall atmosphere I had created: dark and foreboding. Since it is a piece about Hell, I was glad that this mood was pervading to others.

One suggestion I received was to explore the numerological sequences in Inferno and incorporate them into the piece. I did  more research on this and discovered that the number 3 pervades the entire literary work and numbers that are divisible by 3 are important as well. I have decided to incorporate the number 3 in various ways into my composition. The opening motive outlines the 3-note cell [017], and this will serve as the structural basis for the entire work. As well, the piece will be divided into three movements: 1. Upper Hell, 2. Middle Hell, and 3. Lower Hell, with each movement musically depicting three rings of hell in the order Dante visits them in the poem (1. Limbo, Lust, Gluttony; 2. Greed, Anger, Heresy; 3. Violence, Fraud, Treachery). There is also an introduction which serves to set the atmosphere and outline the main melodic and musical motives for the piece. Heresy (the 6th ring) and Treachery (the 9th and final ring) will be the musical and dramatic climaxes of the piece, as 6 and 9 are evenly divisible by 3. I'm looking forward will to presenting the next stage of my compositional work on the piece in class this week!  

No comments:

Post a Comment