Atonal
A (mostly) atonal piece.This was the forth piece I wrote in college for Freund's Composition class. He challenged us to write an atonal piece. Freund had mentioned that we could write pieces for NME. I wanted to add piano to the instrumentation. He was cool with it as long as I could find a performer. Well, I volunteered myself!
For the composition, I thought a lot about the score to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, particularly with regard to the vibraphone. I used composition techniques that I learned from Neil Minturn's 20th Century Theory class: tone rows, inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversion, etc. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I let my ear guide me and had fun with it.
This got performed by NME on a Student Composers Recital in April 2010.
- Bb Clarinet - Stephanie Berg
- Acoustic Guitar - Michael Strausbaugh
- Cello - Matthew Pierce
- Vibraphone - Ian Derrickson
- Piano - Joseph Weidinger
I remember there was a draft in Whitmore that kept blowing my sheet music off the piano. I kept it together though and everyone else played really well. I was happy with the performance!
