Perenepsis XVI: Cantus Tenebris

 This is getting ridiculous now -- nothing for over nine months, then two in two days, and another a couple days later. I'm not sure how this all came together so quickly, but this is the other main idea from the former Perenepsis XIV score. The old score contained two versions of the beginning of this idea, one in good old 4/4, and this one in a 7/7/9/7/7(/7) pattern (mostly), which I found more interesting. It's kind of a theme and variations, or more like 8 restatements of the same basic idea, based on a sort of Gregorian chant-inspired motif. This, together with the dark nature of the material, gives us the subtitle Cantus Tenebris. It starts out in A minor (mostly Aeolian mode, though -- no raised 6/7 until the end of the third time through, which is the only four-bar cycle) for four cycles, then three times in E minor (again, more Aeolian at first), then back to A minor for the final time through. This is actually the oldest of the three recently posted piano pieces, at least going by when they were started, and in terms of length, at 5'21" it's almost exactly halfway between the two others.

I guess this piece might sound pretty gloomy, but as I mentioned in Reverie, my music doesn't always reflect my mood at the time, and this is one where it definitely doesn't. I'm not really sure where this came from, other than that I liked the first two bars, and everything else arose from that, and there was no way to make it into a snappy little dance tune, so it is what it is.

The funny thing is that during the long gap of no new pieces from December 2020 through this October, I hadn't done much work on piano stuff; a lot of work on the symphony and a few different things for string quartet (I thought I had finished one of the quartet pieces but then decided the ending was too abrupt), but the Reverie idea came to me and I had to finish it for some reason, and then finding the old Perenepsis XIV score with four separate ideas in it (I decided to discard two of them, one of which was just an odd chord progression that was more interesting than entertaining, and a twisted waltz theme that maybe needed a little straightening out) led me to flesh out the two more substantial ideas there.

Now it's back to the strings and orchestra; there will be no continuing flow of daily or weekly posts, which is probably more disappointing to me than to anyone else.