1. Reduction to essential intervals: Reduce a double-period, or other long sentence, of your “favorite melody” to its essential treble-bass framework. The melody should be a sentence from a composition from the 19th century. Your reduction should clarify a “Kaupfton” (that’s the main melodic note being prolonged), intermediary, and cadential melody, but for purposes of this assignment, it should also include about 1-2 melodic notes for approximately each bar of music — (edit for clarification, & see Liszt example in class) … resulting from the elimination of NCTs.
Each melodic note should either be consonant with a bass note, or it should involve an interval such as a seventh or a tritone that resolves clearly to a consonance in the next bar. Turn this in.
(2. Then, form a “precompositional plan” by transposing the essential interval structure into a different key, and write it lightly over a spacious portion of your notebook. Add at least one digression—for example, could one of the prolonged harmonies — an imperfect consonance — by doubled in length with a voice exchange? Could it be quadrupled by applying a dominant to each element in that voice exchange? Could a predominant harmony be extended for a few measures with a linear intervalic progression? Could a deceptive cadence be added to delay the conclusion? Don’t turn this in — bring it for discussion in class.)
3. Composition Draft (turn this in, along with a revision of step 2): Using different NCTs, rhythms, and motives than those found in the original, draft a new melody over your precompositional plan. Be rhythmically flexible—do not retain the same notes and intervals “on the beat” that your precompositional plan (step 2) shows. (Very few good compositions in this style are without accented NCTs!) But on the other hand, make sure to use no more than 2 basic rhythmic ideas in the composition—Romantic music is unified by its limited development of rhythmic ideas.
— Note: for part 2, you will be graded according to your correct use of least one “digression”. Review our notes on elaborations like passing chords, arpeggiations, voice exchanges, unfoldings, and linear intervalic progressions, to ensure you’ve made sensible use of them.
— Note: for part 3, you will be graded according to Kennan’s guidelines on note-to-note motion, and on two-part writing, so proof your work. (Note: You may knowingly violate the “step-skip” guidelines in this assignment, but you must mark all such instances in your draft with an asterisk.)