Transition to A material at the end 2/6/21
I left the ending of my comp fairly open and needed to finish it last minute. I initially used another 2/4 bar to transition into repeated material from B however I preferred a total break in tempo and pulse so I decided to use a fermata after building the texture and dynamic. On Tuesday (yesterday) I did some further listening to Dvorak’s 8 Humoresques. I took notice of the treatment of melodic ideas and how they are repeated later in the pieces. Humoresque No7 is in a very simple rondeau form, the use of repetition made for easy listening and encouraged familiarity with the A theme. I compared this with Stanhope’s treatment of melodic material that is also repeated. In Dancing on Clouds, repeated material is often altered by techniques such as fragmentation, augmentation, diminution, call and response, transposition etc.
Coming back to my work fresh allowed me the time to plan what ideas I would like to repeat to transition into the final section of my composition. The semiquaver ostinato would be effective as it will create contrast to the long sweeping chords of the final section. Adding one of the melodies over the ostinato would build a very busy and thick texture so I decided on using the smooth bass line from the B section. Portamento and tremolo in this section bring variety and new colours into the mix here. I used material from B section to unify the parts without building a thicker texture before repeating the introduction section.
Final section
I started this with material from the introduction however, from E to the end I wanted the texture to build before a gradual fade out. I reversed the dynamics so the chords would crescendo towards the end. The semiquaver ostinato enters for two bars before I decided to start the fade out. I did this through reducing dynamics and simplifying the semiquaver ostinato every two bars. I used short pianissimo interjections, I used these to keep the final bars interesting as different colours come to the foreground before fading out.
