Designing music. (Theme and variations for piano)

  
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Piano theme and variations 2.m4a (3690 KB)

I think I write music the same way I design - messing around with initial ideas until something clicks in to place. I do the same when I write computer code too. And DIY and housework! I'm self taught in all these things so the process is one I developed rather than was shown.
I'm clearly a born tinkerer.
 
I wrote the initial theme (the opening few bars) for this back in 1991 and then promptly forgot about it, except that every so often I'd find myself humming it. Eventually, about 12 or so years later I wrote it down and began messing about with it. I can't remember where the next theme came from but I'm sure it's pulled out of the opening chords somehow - I can never remember how I wrote some pieces but the usual way I compose is to pull threads out of the first thing I produce and then weave them in to something else via some form of transformation.
And that's what happens here - the second theme is woven over itself and where harmonies occur I fill them in to produce chords. The whole thing seems to flow quite nicely.
 
The moment at the end of the second section was harmonised more recently and I rather like the delicate nature of it. Playing it softly seems to make the whole thing work so much better.
 
What happens next is something I keep meaning to come back to - section three is an inversion of section two (i.e. it's turned upside down). It's a simple technique for composition and sometimes it produces interesting results - usually needing some sort of work but sometimes not.
 
Anyway I haven't really thought what to do with it - I kind of like it but I don't. It's too "Chinese" (a result of octaves and what I suspect is a pentatonic scale, if you want to be technical). It sounds like the sort of thing you'd hear at a pantomime or accompanying a silent movie when the Chinese villain arrives. I've had ideas how to fix it but never got round to it. So here it is in all its "glory".
 
Interestingly, when I was in Beijing in April I got a bit lost looking for the city walls and ended up walking in completely the wrong direction past Beijing railway station. As I did, the clock struck the hour and the chimes rang out a tune almost exactly like this one - spooky!
 
After the third section's over the introductory theme comes back. Originally it just played the once but one day I was humming it over in my head and I wondered if it worked in canon, just as the "variations" in sections two and three did. It seems so obvious now of course, but it completely passed me by at the time. So I took the main theme and began layering it over and over to see what it sounded like - and I liked it!
There are actually two themes working together but separately and the more I listened to it the more I "heard" a third part - it wasn't there but my mind was filling it in. So I sat down and started to write it down. It wasn't until I had that I realised I'd cribbed a bit of Beethoven, part of the double fugue in the second moment of the third symphony. It's one of my favourite pieces of music and I wonder if I'd been listening to it when I wrote that first theme all those years ago... (I actually think I was more riffing off the theme to Blake's 7 but that's another story)
 
Anyway, it's something I mean to come back to because while I like it, it is obviously "Beethoven" which could be seen as a joke to some people, making them smile, or pretentious by others (comparing myself with Beethoven? How dare I! Ha).
 
So, there you go - it's called "Theme and variations for piano" at the moment. There are two other versions floating around, one for church organ (which I rather like) and one for piano quintet (which works quite well, each instrument coming in at different times). At the moment the latter version is the finale of a quintet I've been working on over the last few years which will never see the light of day at this rate. But it keeps me off the streets.
 
Have a listen, see what you think. Ignore the Chinese bit and keep going to the end. :-)