One Day Wonder #257

For 2 horns, 1 trumpet, 2 trombones and tuba.

It was my intention to write a major-key tango in 7/4 for today’s effort. The only problem is that it didn’t work out too well. From the git-go, it sounds oompah-riffic (something a tango shouldn’t do, unless it’s being played by Germans), which is why I quickly jump from D major to B minor. Yeah, it still doesn’t sound like a tango. Oh well, so much for that! But I did want to exploit the “start-stop” aspect that tango uses so often. You know what that is, right? It’s where the solo voice makes a statement alone, then the ensemble comes in, adds to the action, cuts out, solo voice makes another statement and so on. It can only work for so long before the piece doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. I think that I might have taken it a little beyond that point, but it’s still pleasant enough. There are a lot of nice fourth and fifth intervals in the A theme that give it a nice diatonic feel. In this case, I wasn’t trying to flee from the key, so to speak. Since the tango-thing wasn’t working out, I took it down a different, very conventional road.