One Day Wonder #261

For 2 horns, 1 trumpet and tuba.

I took yesterday off to go help my folks put away their Christmas decorations. Yeah, they still had their Christmas tree up. Oh, what fun! Anyhow, the long drive up there got me to thinking about how to use palindromes in different. That's what this piece is. Yes, indeedy, palindrome-mania continues. Gosh, it’s a lot of fun. I only hope I’m not writing crappy music. OK, here’s the layout: I started with a 25-bar tune in alternating 4/4 and 7/8, and each bar, I add a sharp until it cycles around to the root again. With that done, I turned it around and I also turned it around and inverted it. Finale has a rather sketchy inversion tool, but I still glad that it was doing the math, not me. So what you hear is the retrograde/inversion first (yes, it sounds strange), the simple retrograde is next (not so strange) and finally, the original tune comes last. The concept of turning things around has really got me grappling with form in new and interesting ways. But I’m trying to be careful and not let all this technical stuff detract from the final product. True, you can’t hum this tune – why would you want to? – but it manages to hold together and sound good in two of the three iterations.

Yeah, having a day off was nice, but it looks like from here on out, I'll be back on the piece-a-day wagon until I'm done, which will be soon.