Colloquium Inter Amicos

A conversation among friends -- arguing, agreeing, joking, teasing, talking over each other, changing the subject, bringing back previous topics, and finally adjourning. It is simultaneously an animated landscape with running water, rising and falling hills, birds and other critters, and the occasional moment of stillness.

So, nothing for months and then two pieces within a couple of days. I do have a few other pieces getting near completion, but don't expect this pace to continue. I actually thought this piece was going to be completed before the previous one; it took considerably less effort to finish, but unlike most of my pieces, the ending was the very last part done. Once the early flute theme resurfaced, the ending became clear, and a few minor tweaks finished it, all but one of these being in the final six measures.

With 88 bars in 4/4 at 88 bpm, it's actually slightly over 4 minutes long, due to a couple of fermatas. A few brief false ritardandi are accomplished rhythmically -- my favorite is around 2:08, where the bassoon seems to be dragging the tempo down despite steady quarter notes from the flute; a couple of other milder ones are done with half-note triplets.

Formally, this is similar (but not identical) to something I've wanted to do for a long time -- it's a sort of theme and variations, but with the variations coming first. In this case, it's really themes and variations, with the full version of the primary theme not coming until 3:13 into the piece. It opens in C minor, with the full theme in G major, and ends on a D-flat major seventh chord, so it does wander quite a bit harmonically, with a lot of chromaticism.

As you might guess from the second part of the opening description, it shares some conceptual similarities to The Pensive Ploughman below, and even some thematic relations (e.g., the meandering eighth note background figures, representing water), but has a very different harmonic language, more lively and varied rhythms (although not much faster tempo), and due to the different instrumentation, different colors. I'm not sure which of the two I like better, but that's usually the case for me.