Unfortunately the city’s major newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, neglected to review the only new major work to be premiered by the Sydney Symphony in 2009, not to mention the first time Gautier Capuçon, one of the world’s shining new cellists, performed in Sydney.
However, the country’s national newspaper, The Australian, was there and published this [...]
Download and print Meet the Concerto Program September 2009
Lightfall is composed for a fairly standard orchestra, the significant difference being the exclusion of trumpets. This omission makes the solo horn the highest and brightest brass instrument in the performance.
The orchestral horns are under-utilized for the same reason and only play in the higher registers when they are echoing the soloist in canon. Even [...]
Well, I have spent far more time and words on analysis than I intended but there are two more features that need to be pointed out to complete the picture. [Don’t forget the full score can be downloaded and printed from here.]
A Melodic Cell
The solo horn’s semitone rise of b5 is added to in b8, the [...]
The first two notes (Db-D) that the solo horn plays are a semitone apart; when heard with the basses (Bb) they outline a minor third to a major third. This semitone cell journeys through Lightfall in many guises.
It would be tedious in the extreme to list every occurrence of the semitone cell so here are [...]
Whereas Part One is largely created with a melodic cycle, Part Two is created with a harmonic cycle. A group of seven chords is repeated over and over through the course of the movement.
The chords are in fact compressed from the opening phrases of the horn solo at the beginning of Part Two. This example [...]
The main section of Part One (bars 32-137) is built with individual strands of music that cycle within themselves. The various strands are layered upon each other but otherwise operate independently.
The first strand to look at is that played by the low strings, the trombones and the woodwind. When these three groups of instruments are [...]
Earlier I talked a lot about the octatonic scale and how I manufactured new scales and organized them into charts. So what survived after rejecting all that early work? Well, almost all of Lightfall is built on two octatonic scales.
Part One is the common octatonic scale of alternating tones and semitones: Bb Cb Db D [...]
In keeping with my decision to work more intuitively (and remembering the desire to break the tyranny of the barline) I have taken a free approach to rhythm. Nevertheless, a piece must have unity and in Lightfall the durations of 7, 5 and 3 are woven through the work.
PART ONE
The durations are first stated by [...]
The similarity in the structure of the two parts of Lightfall has already been laid out in 18: Two Images. There is a further similarity in that the overall tonality of both parts is shaped by a falling minor third.
[Don't forget that the full score can be downloaded and printed from here.]
Part One begins clearly [...]
