First Draft

I sketched a first draft for my composition. I assumed a duration of 15 minutes, which I divided in convenient part of 5 Minutes, of course, without the claim to set this in stone, yet.

I also computed the quantity of bars in each of the parts according to a certain time signature. It proved very helpful to me to outline these proportions of the piece at the very beginning, even if I dismiss them later. Thus I get an overview over the piece and can work on different spots at a very early stage. The following image shows the first draft:

So I know I have a total of 342 bars. Each of the three parts should comprise very different types of music, which I drafted on the next sketch:

The first staff shows an ascending line (for the first part) and the third a chord, extended by a fermata and a solo figuration (for the second part). The three staves at the bottom show an idea for the last part. I wrote "Regentropfen", which is the german word for rain drops. I envisioned a tone slowly flowing down a given interval like a rain drop running down a window, producing a tail of water behind it.

But what about the organization of these ideas inside the three parts? Here are my suggestions for the first and the middle part:

Each box stands for one bar. The peaks in the upper figure represent a high point in the ascending motif. A break in the line represents silence where such a high point is omitted. As the part develops, I add parallel lines of ascending motifs, maybe in a constant interval.

The lower graphic shows the second part. A huge chord works like an inital point where a solo is starting. The chord is slowly fainting and eventually renewed after a short period of time.

I have yet no idea how this solo may be look like, nor have I thought about the third part. I am sure these two parts have cohesion and avoid narrativity as well. But do they work together? Isn't the composition falling apart as soon as the first part ends and the second begins? We will see.

What's the story?

As a composer, one of my main interests is how coherence in music can be achieved, maintained, or avoided.

In classical music there are several devices which can be employed to achieve coherence, such as tonality, cadences and so on. This often leads to certain forms like sonata form, rondo form, which engender expectations in the listener. An expectation might be, that after a dominant comes the tonic, or that after a development section comes the reprise. In general, a certain decision of the composer is justified by what comes next, it decides if there is coherence or not. I call that a narration - a story, - which is based on coherent decisions.

But how to avoid narration but keep coherence? Philip Glass' famous opera "Einstein on the Beach", as well as other works by composers of minimal music, achieves this by employing repetitive patterns, which never narrate but keep coherence through the repetitions itself. 

I am inclined to find my own way to discard narration but keep coherence. My first choice is to use a string orchestra. It is, even more than the brass section, the most homogeneous section of the orchestra, though capable of lots of different playing techniques to generate different sounds. Thus I get a coherent and smooth sound with the possibility of making scratches to this glacial surface. 

We will see, what scratches that might be.