Perenepsis #7: Winter Contemplation

Another Perenepsis entry so soon? Yeah, sometimes it just happens. #6 came together in less than a week and this one, aided by a day off for a visit to the dentist, in about a day. It isn't what I started to write, but I shifted gears on it almost immediately, retaining only the first three notes (transposed) of the original idea and decided that I had something coherent that could turn out pretty decent.

As the full title implies, this is a slow, meditative piece, in B. Specifically, the rather neglected Locrian mode... except for when the F-sharps pull it more toward Phrygian mode. Or when the A-sharps make it more of a plain B Minor. Or when the D-sharps skew it toward B Major. Anyway, it's in some form of B. Except for the middle 3/4 section, which is in A... sort of.

Even though #6 and #7 don't sound that much alike, they both fit my hard to explain definition of Perenepsis -- #6 is more along the lines of the original #2 (now #1; I have since swapped the order of the first two, which is not reflected on this site), and this one is closer to #5.

Meanwhile, the piano piece that I started less than two weeks ago, having been pushed aside by these two newcomers, has decided to give it a rest for a while. I'll probably work on some other things while I let it marinate. Maybe something for strings; give the piano a rest for a bit.

Perenepsis #6: Folk Dance(*)

First off, I have to say that the full title here is a compromise. It is a sort of folk dance, somewhat along the lines of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, but a little distorted, using mostly alternating bars of 11/8 and 10/8, with three sevens and a five somewhere in the middle, inspiring the title "Folk Dance for People With One Leg Shorter Than the Other". However, I realized that some might find this offensive, so I decided to go instead with "Folk Dance for People With One Leg Longer Than the Other", which can't possibly offend anyone, can it?

The rhythmic oddities having already been addressed, this is otherwise just a little piano piece (as implied by the Perenepsis part of the title) in D minor, never straying very far or for very long from the initial idea expressed in the first two measures. If you're familiar with Dvorak's Slavonic Dances mentioned above, you might like this... or you might not. And if you're not familiar with them, the same thing applies, which makes this reference rather superfluous, but I thought this write-up needed a little padding, so there it is.