Symphony No. 1

Full Band

Here it is: a symphony. Well, part of a symphony: I've only written the first two movements. I drew inspiration from various composers; I want to say Persichetti (Symphony No. 6) and Sparke (Dance Movements), but also Shostakovich (Symphony No. 5) and Ito ("La Vita" Symphony). The first movement is in traditional syphonic sonata form, though the tempo varies a bit, and it's not really in any key: I don't use traditional chord functions much, so you could call it mostly atonal, but in reality that's not very descriptive. I had originally intended this to be a piece in Bb lydian -- I was really going to call it Lemonade River; I may still write one -- hence the first measure, but by measure 4 or so it became clear that this wasn't happening, so I figured now would be a good time as any to write my first symphony. Around measure 5, which is in 7/4 rather than the intro 5/4, I decided not to be confined by time signatures, so you will never hear more than two measures in a row in the same time signature except for four bars of 5/4 a couple of times. Time signatures are constraining, because they have their own pattern of accents that the music has to agree with. Here, I let the music dictate the time signature instead of the reverse, which means that the music's natural accents indicate each new measure rather than the other way around. When I feel like it I'll do a statistical analysis of the time signatures, but they range from 2/4 to a case of 8/4, with 3, 4, and 5 being rather frequent, 2 and 6 less so, and 7 even less so. That's because 7 feels like a run-on -- if there were a secondary emphasis, the measure would have been broken. The second movement continues the principle of changing time signatures, but since the tempo is much slower, fractional beats abound -- 3/8, 5/8, 7/8, and even a 9/8 or two, sometimes using compound meter but usually just having one beat longer than the others. Anyway, have a listen. I have yet to compose the other two movements, but be patient!

Listen to Symphony No. 1 - I - Moderato (right-click to download)
Listen to Symphony No. 1 - II - Adagio (right-click to download)