Week 33: Writing Answering Phrases

This week, I now wrote answering melodic phrases for examples supplied by the Open College of the Arts during the Music Foundations course.
For each two bar bar example, I wrote a two bar answering phrase to create a four bar melody.

Here are my solutions:

I am pleased with the line from bar 5, I thought the trill was a nice touch. I also wanted to emphasize the heroic character of the line by adding two intervals. It was inspired from my listening to Baroque music. This music contains many of such embellishments.

Another assignment involved the composition of a two bar answering rhythm to an opening rhythm taken from the OCA Course guide. Then I expanded on this rhythm, creating an eight bar rhythmic theme. The aim was to create balance and a sense of completeness.

This is the result:

Next, the rhythmic theme was taken and converted to melody.

The course guide recommended I start by establishing a framework, setting some variables using my knowledge acquired up till now. This involves choosing a key, clef and tempo.

A chose the key of D major, containing two sharps, in the treble clef. This was because I wanted to be able to play it myself on mandolin. I settled on an andante tempo; the piece contains a rather pronounced rhythm, which almost has something heroic to it.

Then I started composing.

First I imagined two people, maybe a couple, having a peppery conversation. The first person asks and receives an answer which maybe unsatisfactory to him or her. So he or she repeats the question again and more strongly. The second person then finally gives a full answer. The dialogue ends.

As you can see, in the first bar I created an a melodic fifth, going from the tonic (D) to the dominant. I believe this creates a sense with the listener of "something is going to happen here!". And for such a short 8 bar melody, I feel the first bar needs to immediately draw the listener in. The dominant interval is very useful for that and gives a strong statement.

In the second bar, I decided to end on the E. The melody does not resolve in the tonic just yet, creating something like a question, serving to build a tension which needs to come to resolution.

The next sequence of two bars forms an "intermediate answer" to the first two bars. But as it ends in E, the tension is not yet resolved. So here is this dialogue between two people, one asking something and the other giving a tentative answer. The questioner then proceeds to repeat his question, as if he is not really satisfied with the answer.

I attempted to achieve this by simply repeating a variation of the "question" phrase again, and this time more insistent (bars 5 and 6). I accentuated this insistence by adding harmonic intervals.

In bars 7 and 8 a more detailed answer follows and the composition ends in a harmonized D chord containing an octave. This generates finality to the answer and the piece as a whole, I think.

The insistent, even "nagging" questioner has now received an answer that is more detailed and final. This detail is literally symbolized by using more notes in the phrases, as if the answering part is giving more information. The finality is built by using two ascending patterns ending in the strong chord.

I really enjoyed this exercise, and it gave a great sense of accomplishment to have - for the first time in my life - really composed a little theme. I wrote a few songs before, but they were really just chord based. Not there is much wrong with that, but you can sort of hear that. Maybe that could also, if done too often, become a bit stale as a composition devise. This approach is different, in that it started with a rhythmic pattern and a melody.