Monday, May 09, 2016

Diabelli Project 109 - Piece for Solo Violin

The Diabelli Project is about offering my weekly flash-composition sketches freely to all. Like Antonio Diabelli's theme, these sketches aren't great music. But perhaps (as in Diabelli's case) there's a Beethoven out there who can do great things with them.

When I do one of these flash composition exercises, there are always surprises -- even when I think I know where the sketch is going. Recently I've been concentrating on music for solo marimba, creating themes and working with ideas that eventually I'll tie together into a single work. This sketch started out that way. The triplet motif is pretty easy to play with two mallets. But then the runs started, and notes they were driving to seemed too high for the marimba -- but not for the violin. So sometime around the third measure, the internal sound of this music changed to that of the violin. And that informed the articulation marks, and indeed, the rest of the sketch.

It's not the first sketch in this series I've written for solo violin (see Diabelli Project 071). Perhaps they, like the marimba sketches, are all part of a larger work?



As always, you can use any or all of the posted Diabelli Project sketches as you wish for free. Just be sure to share the results. I'm always curious to see what direction someone else can take this material.

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