Action Piece - Composition Walkthrough Pt.5 - Bars 25-40

After the initial statement of the action passage as discussed in the last part, the orchestra comes to a brief moment of relative rest. I will again use reductions here, you can compare it to the score sheet in the attachment at the bottom of the article.

Bars 25-27

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-bar-25-27/s-XdWeC

A sustained Polychord in Strings and Woodwinds creates a considerable amount of tension in spite of a relative rhythmical rest. The Polychord extends on the initial idea of the "Main Chord" discussed several times before (a minor chord with it's major third as bass note) in a way that it stacks another minor triad on the bass note. So here we have a bass note of F with an Fm chord in the middle Woodwinds and a Dbm triad in the high woodwinds and higher strings.

To keep a certain sense of nervousness, I added a written-out trill between F and Gb in the low woodwinds. Horns and Trumpets provide some small motifs outlining Dbm, however in bar 26 the trumpets add additionally an Em triad to the mix, having 3 triads sound at the same time (Fm, Dbm, Em).

I specifically request the woodwinds to hold this chord without playing vibrato which creates a more neutral, rather lifeless and static sound. A romantic vibrato on the notes would make the structure of the polychord less transparent and additionally just be stylistically not that fitting.

Bar 27 is one of the 3 occurances of what I would call a Pyramid chord. Rather than playing all notes of the chord on the dowbeat they join in sequentially in an eighth note pattern. This has the advantage of a written out "crescendo" as not only the dynamics increase but also more notes join in towards the high register which opens up the harmonic range upwards which feels like a dynamic increase as the same effect occurs with brass that play a crescendo on a long note: the higher harmonics will become more prominent with higher dynamics.

In order to create some consequence of this idea of the pyramid chord, I used it three times in that piece, every time slightly different but recognaizable enough to get the connection.

All three occurances use rather dissonant chords in order to build up a "dominantic" feeling of tension that resolves in the following bars.

Here are the three chords stacked together.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-chord-pyramids/s-M4znr

The chord symbols I chose are not really that helpful except for maybe the one in bar 27.

Bar 17 basically stacks a Gbm triad with an added major third (Bb) on top of F as bass note. Bar 32 is more of a diatonic cluster of the Em scale on top of an Eb bass.

The great thing about these Pyramids is that you can get away with incredibly complex chords. Particularly the third one seems very unintelligible. However due to the fact that you roll up the chord you expose its contents which makes it much easier for the listener to understand the chord and still you can use the effect of high dissonance to your advantage.

Going back to bar 27, it serves as a buildup towards the next section. The woodwinds play an octatonic run in octaves, leading to bar 28.

Bar 28-31

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-bar-28-31/s-cy9Wm

Bar 28 spontaneoulsy modulates. Since we've been at rougly an F fundamental since bar 19, we leap up a minor third here to a G# fundamental. The modulation upwards by a minor third is a relatively common film music cliché but gets a bit disguised here by the general tonal ambiguity of the whole piece. If we dig a little deeper here we could also say that the general octatonic feeling the dominates this piece (a scale which repeats itself every minor third) makes this "modulation" from a tonal standpoint rather "non existant" as it more or less is an "inversion" of the same thing. However the registral push upwards in the instrumental textures create a lift nevertheless.

This passage revisits the initial action idea discussed in the last part of this Walkthrough. However it is a developed form compared to the first occurance as only the rhythmic motif remains (more or less) intact. The (very small) melodic component of the initial idea as well as the harmony gets transformed.

Harmonically we revisit the "signature chord" once again, this time as Em/G# with a few harmonic sidesteps at the end of each bar. Notice also that every melodic movement of the highest lines (for instance Violins 1) is harmonized.

The chords that are "not the signature chords" I chose based on what I felt fitting. They don't necessarily follow any particular scale, however much material is sourced again from the octatonic scale.

There is a rhythmic double tongue note played in the rather low register of the trumpets (not notated in the reduction above) which breaks up the rhythmical eight note pulse a bit and due to the great capability of brass playing such rapid multiple tongue phrases sounds pretty pushing.

The orchestration is pretty much a tutti as you would expect it, however with some deliberate choices here:

I didn't want to move the strings into their high brilliant register as I wanted to keep some darkness to the sound which is the reason why I orchestrated them rather in their lower yet rougher register.

All sections are written in chords, with woodwinds providing the highest notes in this tutti which has the effect of having these notes present in the overal sound (which helps to prevent dullness by piling up too much material in the middle register) and still leaves room for the push in the following passage where the higher strings join in on their high register providing that "harmonic sparkle" in the top register which creates the needed lift for the following "fanfare".

 Bar 32-40 

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-bar-32-40/s-ymIl3

Bar 32 uses again a highly dissonant "Pyramid" chord to build up for the following passage. The following bars are the first occurance of a rather predictable meter in that piece that doesn't constantly change. This gets even more confirmed by the rather static half note pulsing bass pedal. So there is quite a bit of musical contrast to the preceding passages. The idea was to steer a bit away from the constant "change" and provide a passage of relative predictability without losing the energy. The central element here is what one could call a brass fanfare played by Horns and Trumpets that evolves around the chords of Em/G# (the Signature chord again) and G#m which feels like a resolution to the chord before. Towards the end of the statement in bar 38 and 39 that relative harmonic clarity gets more complex again, first with a polychord of Em and G#m simultaneously in bar 38, which however is not that prominent as the G#m-Content remainsin quickly moving strings/woodwinds passages. In bar 39 however the Horns/Trumpets sustain a rather dissonant polychord of C#m over Fm.

I make relative extensive use here of so called chromatic side-stepping. The procedure is relatively straight forward. Move the chord you have by a chromatic step down (or up) and back again. This doesn't establish a new harmony but just creates a brief moment of harmonic colour. You can find these sidesteps in the woodwind figures starting bar 33 as well as in the middle triplet notes in the brass in bars 35 and 38.

A word on the woodwinds/high strings: Besides the chromatic sidestepping these figures join in on the duality between Em and G#m changing back and forth between these two chords. From an orchestrational standpoint the woodwinds play these passages harmonized while the strings only play the top note in octaves. The decision for this was to keep clarity and not completely overwhelm this register with harmony. The alternative would have been to divisi the strings into chords which however would have diminished the substance and not really benefited the overall sound with all this harmonic information.

The orchestration of the brass fanfare happens pretty straight forward with trumpets doubling horns an octave above. To create a sense of development I tried  to create a "melodic ark" if you can call it that way that keeps raising. Starting off in bar 33 in pretty low and dark registers in both sections (Horns+Trumpets) in bar 38 and 39 the trumpets reach their highest register with a sounding high C# on the first trumpet. This is only possible if you have excellent players as it is higher than what is "recommendable" as highest note for the trumpets. However of course pushing the trumpets to their limits also creates a very edgy sound which is exactly what I wanted here.

Structurally this Fanfare works in a way that it repeats bars 33-35 in bars 36-38 however with an alternative (higher) ending targeting into the Polychord in 39.

During that Polychord, I consciously leave the downbeat of bar 39 free to create some textureal variety and on count two establish that descending and accellerating (first quarters, then triplet quarters) bass line towards the new section starting in bar 41.