Sunday, February 1, 2009

A lesson with Larysa Kuzmenko

Yesterday I got the chance to have a lesson with Composer Larysa Kuzmenko. We spent the time working on my piece "Rise of the Xaphoon" and we re-visited her comment on phrase structure. My piece currently has a lot of ideas, each one comes in breifly and then goes away just as quick. There's no real solid themes to latch on to which is what gives the piece it's manic feel. I think this is what I had been missing, it's the reason why I'm not enjoying the work as much as I could. I have a lot of antecedent phrase's but it never gets responded to. She suggested the idea of picking a couple ideas in the piece that I want to make the focus, and then incorperate the idea of imitation to expand on the ideas and the develope them later in the piece. Also, Larysa told me that if I use fragments of the opening motifs later in the piece it will give the listen a sense of familiarity and make it easier for them to listen to how the piece works as a whole.

The idea of unity in my piece is just what I'm looking for. It was deffinitely a great lesson!

NB

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