SESSION 4

This session was all about structuring the piece so we began by listening to all the material composed so far.

At Lord Grey school most of the students were playing orchestral instruments and so the textures were generally dense. Also as this was a large group we had many different sections of material to knit together. But more importantly we felt the need to unify the beginning and ending. We did this by working as one large group creating a series of rhythmic trills and pulses based on a cycle of 60 beats using one of the four chords for the opening and the Dérive chord for the ending.

At St. Thomas More we had a smaller group using mainly mallet and keyboard instruments. This had created delicate material that had more of a chamber music feel, with moments in the piece where only one or two students were playing. We had created long sections based on the chords and also several short sections based on decorated chords melodies and trills. We therefore decided to repeat sections more than once, discussing where they should be placed in the overall structure of the composition. This gave a very symmetrical shape to the piece and as with Lord Gray school we ended the work with varied repetitions of the Dérive chord.

Example 1 St. Thomas More School

Example 2 Lord Grey School

 

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