Product Description
Eight Condensed Pieces
for Four Timpani
I - Intrada
II - Rustico
III - Recitativo
IV - Deciso
V - Vigoroso
VI -Riflessivo
VII - Cantabile
bagualesco
VIII - Animoso
Suite of eight pieces for four timpani. In theory, one could perform them
individually. However, they are so short that I would highly recommend playing
at least three of them.
Use a standard set of timpani: 81 cm / 74 cm / 66 cm / 58 cm.
Don't dissimulate the re-tuning (pedaling) between the pieces, rather celebrate
it and make it sound as a short musical interlude (say, 15 seconds? Do you need
more?). In a recording, however, I wouldn't include those retunings.
Each piece is one minute long or slightly more. The complete duration of
the cycle, including the retuning between movements, is therefore around 10
minutes.
The title is clearly an allusion to Elliott Carter's pieces. By pure chance,
my pieces were finished on 30th August (2017), exactly the same day of the date
(but in 1966) on the manuscript of Saëta,
the first of Carter's Eight Pieces.
Except for the third piece (Recitativo),
which should be performed with the fingers (without mallets) and some short passages
in other pieces, this cycle doesn't call for "hardcore" extended
techniques or instrument preparation. In this sense, it might be also adequate for
students or orchestral competitions.
Juan María Solare, 31 August 2017
Composition
techniques involved
The key to this cycle of pieces is the following table of motivic changes
(the arrows mean "becomes in the next phrase":
a
e
b
f
c
a
d
g
e
d
f
h
g
b
h
c
At the beginning of each piece I wrote the table of motifs concretely used
in that piece. Notice that when a motif reappears it is usually transformed in
some way - not just copy+paste.
Each piece has an own
metric, metronome speed and number of phrases according to the following general
plan:
Piece I: 4/4, q=70, two phrases of 8 motifs
Piece II: 7/8, q=74, three phrases of 7 motifs
Piece III: 3/4, q=60, four phrases of 5 motifs
Piece IV: 5/4, q=100, five phrases of 4 motifs
Piece V: 4/4, q=80, five phrases of 4 motifs
Piece VI: 7/8, q=70, four phrases of 5 motifs
Piece VII: 5/8, q=105, three phrases of 7 motifs
Piece VIII: 3/4, q=54, two phrases of 8 motifs
This plan strives to achieve variety in the rhythmic feeling at various
levels (including form segmentation), but doesn't try to be absolutely systematic,
i.e. it doesn't include all possible kinds of metrics or a graduated scale of
metronome speeds (in this sense, is not serially conceived).
Juan María Solare, 31 August 2017
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