Assignment 5: A Harmony in the Round

Despite being confined to a limited number of chords in this composition, I wanted to give this piece a classical and melodic feel, avoiding the use repetitive of ‘pop chords’.  As it is the instrument I have most knowledge of, I chose to use a keyboard to compose this piece, beginning in C major but including a number of key changes.  My main aim here is to create a piece which makes use of a number of interrupted cadences, building suspense but not using the perfect cadence until the last few bars.  However, I want this piece to mainly be flowing and gentle with just a touch of tension in the middle section. 

As the theme of this assignment is to use a cyclic chord progression, I have decided to base this piece on another cycle, this time the human life cycle.  Throughout the composition I hope to achieve a sense of development, moving from childhood simplicity, through a tense ‘adolescent’ period, into adulthood and finally old age.

My initial structural ideas for this piece are as follows:

Principal Section A	Secondary Section B	Subsidiary Section C	Secondary Reprise B	Principal Reprise + closing A + D
Cmajor bpm = 85 20 bars	Cmajor bpm = 85 5 bars	C major bpm = 106 15bars	Ebmajor bpm = 85 5 bars	Ebmajor moving to Cmajor bpm = 85 30 bars