One Day Wonder #209

For 1 horn, 1 trumpet and 2 trombones.

To assuage my guilt about my lazy approach, I decided to give myself a challenge for today’s work: throw in constantly changing meters and see whether I could write something that sounds relatively normal. The metrical scheme for this is 3/8, 2/4, 5/8, 3/4, 7/8 and 4/4, which repeats in that order over the course of the entire piece and constitutes an entire phrase. It became pretty clear early on that I’d have to divide the phrase in half to give the whole concept viability, since writing a continuous melody with no resting point is not a good way to go. That midway point occurs naturally (more or less) at the 3/4 bar. Anyhow, following the success of the ritornello in #207, I use it here again, though it’s slightly different. The reprise in #207 had melodic alterations (both higher and lower); this time around, the tune is passed to other instruments. It’s first taken by the trombone, then the horn and finally the trumpet. In between the return of the theme, there are some adventures that get weirder as the piece progresses. The theme repeats three times and we’re done. Just to outline the metrical scheme, I dashed off a little outro. Every time the trumpet comes in is the beginning of the measure, with the last note being the first beat of the 4 measure as the last note. And then it’s done. You know, I was really thinking that this piece was really going to bust my chops and it didn’t. What’s going on here?? Well, either I’m getting a lot better at this or I’m getting a lot less discerning. I can’t tell which one it is…