Grass Roots 1st Movement

I have completed the first movement for now. The reason I say "for now" is that I'm not sure that it is complete until I finish the other movements.

The movement is very free in form although there is some repetition of material from time to time. But even those repetitions are varied. Since the movement is titled " A Voice in the Wilderness", there are certainly sections that evoke a sense of being a lone voice trying to accomplish a monumental task. Adding to the the uncertainty are several chromatic sections the evoke a sense of doubt. Lastly, there are sections of lyrical and harmonic beauty that try to depict the beauty of the land that is trying to be saved.

One challenge I was facing in this movement was to obtain rhythmic variety. Except for a few meter changes, the movement is mostly written in 4/4. However, one does not sense a strong metrical pulse because the phrases begin and end on different beats of the measure. I also changed tempo often to further disguise the regular pulse. a good example of both of these coming together is in measure 17 where the Ritard and the phrase end after beat 2 and the new phrase and tempo start on beat 3. The other part of the rhythmic challenge was the divisions of the beats as most everything was duple. Over the course of several revisions, I broke up the constant duple feel with the insertion of triplets and a quintuplet.

To see and hear what I have composed thus far, go to http://www.cooppress.net/grass_roots_blog.html

Dr. B