This is the second entry in my ongoing series on creating my next symphony, whose working title is “Symphony 5.”
So, last time, I waxed poetic on my hopes and dreams for the work. Today, I’m bringing you up to date on my progress so far. This will be a short post.
I’m in the process of planning out some structural things about the work. I know I want four movements; in the preceding works I’ve titled the movements, I: Fanfare, II: Dirge/Elegy, III: Promenade, IV: Jam. In so doing I established a programme framing the theme and character of each movement, and told a story around the rhythms of life in Trinidad and Tobago; wherever you look, see these elements of “hey there”, of pathos, of exhibition, of “lewwe party-down”. I felt – and still feel – that this is a meaningful frame within which to present a work that reflects the lived experience of normal people everywhere. So, I’m keeping to that framework.
The next step in my process, typically, is to decide on an overarching harmonic scaffolding. In this I’ve imitated Bach and others who use a ‘tonal arc’ in their multi-movement works. A tonal arc is just a way of establishing Key relationships among the movements: the first and last movements are often in the same Key – home; the internal movements are in Keys that have a functional relationship to the home Key. Using a tonal arc is one way to unify a multi-movement work – these movements exist on a single storyline defined by Key relationships.
Sticklers might quibble about my capitalization of the word Key. Well, in music, there are keys and there are Keys. On a piano, the white and black thingies that you press to sound a pitch are called keys (hence, keyboard). In music composition, the orientation of melodic and harmonic material around the pitches of a specified major or minor scale is Key. It’s not often easy to know which you’re talking about, so I’m using the capitalization as a visual cue. (It’s not about grammar, Nazis!)
For Symphony 5, I’ve decided to use C Major as the home Key. C Major is actually an easy first Key when you’re starting to learn about Keys in music. It’s easy because you don’t have to remember much. On a piano keyboard, if you play the piano key C and then play the next 7 white piano keys in sequence you end up on another C (one octave higher). That’s the C Major scale. Also, if you sing the do re mi fa so la ti do (Solfège) melody while you do this, all the piano notes line up with your aural expectation. When you create music using the pitches of the scale of C Major, you are composing in the Key of C Major.
Starting on any note other than C and playing only white keys, it’s impossible to sing the Solfège melody correctly because the pitches don’t line up with your aural expectation of the major scale; you’re forced to use a combination of white keys and black keys to maintain the ‘correct’ Solfège melody.
There’s more to say about scales and keys and Keys and Key Signatures. It suffices to say that C Major is the home Key for this symphony.
So, the first and last movements will be in C Major. Here, in my first major work for steelpan, I think this is a very good place to start.
The plan is to establish the entire tonal arc – the Key of each movement, as well as the harmonic plan within each movement – now, before I do anything else. This will be a first, in a sense; while I typically do start with an overall tonal plan for the movements, I normally allow the harmonic relationships within each movement to evolve during the writing of the music – organically. For this, though, imma lay everything out, even before I write any melodies.
Welp, I guess I lied when I said this was going to be a short post. Instead, I talked about the thematic frame for my symphonies, then about my intention to use a tonal arc, and somewhere in all this I went down a rabbit hole about keys and Keys and the C Major scale. The teacher in me can’t help but explain things, I guess.
More later. In the meantime, here’s a picture of me with my glasses all crooked. It’s a beautiful day, by the way.
Roger J Henry Music 