Presentation Plans

With my presentation date coming up in the near future, I need to start preparing for it to make it both educational and entertaining for my classmates. So far I plan on first giving a brief walk-through over how I transposed and arranged my music, and then explain what a fugue is with the Britney Spears string quartet video. During this time it will give me and my friends time to set up with our instruments, after which we will play the prelude and then the fugue with small introductions from me. I will work out the timing on this later after I have rehearsed it with friends, and if needed I will add in some other activity if I have time left over.

Completed Prelude!

As of this Sunday I have completed both the fugue and the prelude, and they are ready to be performed. I have selected a few french hornists already to play these pieces, and I'm hoping to rehearse with them starting this weekend. The prelude's arranging and software input took much less time than the fugue- I seem to have gotten the hang of muse score, however bad it is. I unfortunately had to cross some voices so they are no longer in their proper ranges while I was writing it, but I wanted to be kind to my friends and not force them to play incredibly low or high.

A Little More on Fugues

Since most people don't really know what a fugue is exactly, I decided to write one of these posts on it to better educate my classmates when I do finally present my finished project.

The definition of a fugue: a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.

So essentially, a fugue is a piece of music that has one distinct melody line that is played by every voice in the music (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) at different times so one voice will always have this melody or phrase while the rest accompany it. When playing a fugue, it is always very important to let this central phrase be the loudest voice in the ensemble (or hands, if playing piano) in order for the fugue to make any sense. 

Here is a beginner friendly example of a fugue, featuring Britney Spears' "Oops I did it Again" that I may use in my class presentation, as it's pretty entertaining while also educational. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aeZSlZBjGI

Horn Transposition Completed

The transposition is complete with voices 4 and 5 added in. I am glad to be done transposing- it's very tedious, and takes a long time. I am now ready to start plugging the notes into MuseScore when I am ready to publish my next post. 

Horn Voices 1-3 Transposed

Completed writing in the horn voices 1-3 with their transpositions. Horn voices 4 and 5 to follow. 

Second Page Voicing

The second page with the voicing highlighted. Again, using the same system: red for horn 1, orange for horn 2, green for horn 3, blue for horn 4, and purple for horn 5. Ready to start transposing the second page. 

Completed First Page Transposition

The first page of the quintet with Horn voices 4 and 5 completed (the blue and purple lines). Ready to move on to the second and final page of voice leading and transposition. 

Prelude Horn Lines 2 and 3

Just finished transposing horn lines 2 and 3. There were a few confusing bumps with some over-lapping harmony lines, but I think they've been straightened out. It will be interesting to see how this works with french horns as piano lines often jump around and skip several notes, which is harder for horns to play. I've already found a few mistakes here and there, and hope this won't be a new trend with the Prelude. The transposing work is tedious, and I still have horn voices 4 and 5 to complete yet. I'm a little concerned about trying to create a five voice horn piece in MuseScore; I'm not sure they have that function.

Horn Line 1 of Prelude Begun

I've begun the process of transposing my Horn 1 line in the Prelude. I have to call it "Horn 1" as this is a five part piece, and therefore doesn't fit soprano, alto, tenor, bass type part writing. I've so far found it a little challenging to distinguish between the voices, and often don't know which voice to give distinct separate melodies lines to as they appear randomly in the music. Some of it even goes so far as to create a single three-note chord in the treble staff with notes so close together, they have to write out a separate beam for the soprano next to it! Very funny looking, and probably the only time I have ever seen this in music.

Unbroken Connections

1) POWs are bound by many rules and regulations, as are music arrangers and composers.

2) All the voices in a piece of music must work together to achieve the end goal, as do people through a time of war.

3) Lots of stealing happens in music writing, and a lot of ideas aren't original. POWs often have to steal to survive.

4) Great composers often aren't appreciated until they've passed away, as many Japanese soldiers aren't considered "honorable" until they have died or made some other great sacrifice for their country.

5) Music is very complicated and complex and sometimes doesn't make sense to other people, like Louie's bogus drawing he made for the Japanese.