Browsing by Subject "cello"

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    Five Short Pieces for Cello Quartet
    (2016-10-29) Wegley, Arianna, J
    My aim for this project was to engage directly with questions of musical composition and theatrical production by creating several compositions to accompany moments in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I created my own compositions, emphasizing post-tonal music theory techniques as way of exploring how the contemporary sounds might add a new dimension to Shakespearean classics. I limited myself to one instrument, the cello, to make use of the instrumental range of what is often seen as the musical instrument that is closest to the human voice. I used GarageBand music editing software to arrange the instrumentation as a cello quartet, in which I recorded myself playing each part separately, then layered the recordings together to create four-part sonorities. My five consecutive short pieces accompany the fairy song in Act 2 Scene 2 with an introduction, and four verse accompaniments. These explore the coordination and manipulation of pitch class, pitch intervals, and the mod-12 complement system. 20th century post-tonal musical influences include Milton Babbitt's "Philomel" (1964), Steve Reich's "Different Trains" (1988), and the fourth movement of Anton Webern's "5 Sätze Für Streichquartett" (1909).