Here is a major revision of my Canon #4, Topaz, a piece I had initially finished on December 20, 2014:
What is the piece about?
On a technical front, the piece explores what you can do with a long descending chromatic line in the context of a canon. Ever since 2014, I’ve thought of Canon 4 as my “Descending Chromatic Line Piece” because it has continued to be my only canon that features such a line – a sequence of quarter notes descending in half steps – so prominently. On a stylistic front, the piece reminds me of a Bach canon more than many of my other efforts, though it makes no claim of being in the authentic style of Bach, and I’m sure it contains much that deviates from the master’s style. I don’t ever set out to “write like Bach.” I do set out to write music that gives me a hint of the same pleasure that I experience when I listen to Bach. This is one case where I felt I had been successful in creating for myself a pathway to experiencing that pleasure. On an emotive front, I’ve always liked the sense of forward drive in this piece, the propulsion.
What did I do to the piece and why?
I found myself wishing that the original piece from 2014 were a little longer and that the ending were less abrupt. My approach to writing canons has been that I only “say” what I’m ready to say at the time. I try to keep it short and sweet. But sometimes, in retrospect, what seemed appropriately short now seems too short.
Over the years, I had made a few attempts to add material and write a longer ending, but I couldn’t come up with anything that matched what was already there, so I left the piece alone. But recently it occurred to me that a natural way to extend a canon that features a descending chromatic line would be to introduce a new section that features an ascending one. So now the piece has an ABA structure, with the A section featuring a descending line and the B section featuring an ascending one. There’s also a new ending.
How did I do it?
To create the new B section of this piece, I wondered if I would have to write it completely from scratch. The answer was, mercifully, no! I decided to try an experiment which usually doesn’t work for a tonal piece – I made a chromatic mirror inversion of the whole A section. That basically means reflecting all the notes across a horizontal axis so the whole piece is turned upside down, with all of the note-to-note distances preserved exactly. (It’s a laborious process to do this by hand, but software helps out.) This often gives usable results for non-tonal music, especially music that uses symmetric scales like the whole-tone scale or the octatonic/diminished scale – see my piece Birdsong, which uses chromatic mirror inversion everywhere – but for tonal music employing standard major/minor scales it often produces something incoherent. In this particular case though, the result made sense. The long descending chromatic line turned into a long ascending chromatic line, as expected. What surprised me was that the rest of the material accompanying and surrounding the chromatic line also remained intelligible, though not fully “ready to go.” I spent some time revising it, allowing myself to deviate more extensively from strict imitation than I would have done back in 2014, when strictness was more of a priority for me.
As for the ending, the perennial challenge is how to bring the motion of the canon to a stop in a way that is in character with the rest of the piece, but different enough that it can be recognized as an ending, not a continuation; terse enough that it doesn’t sound like fluff in contrast to the tight counterpoint that preceded it, but long enough that it lets you down gently, with some preparation and grace. It’s probably one of the hardest parts of writing canons or any music that’s intricate and dense. To make it harder, I find that endings are an area where my opinions or reactions occasionally lack the stability that I can depend on elsewhere. Generally, what sounded like good counterpoint in 2014 still sounds like good counterpoint to me today in 2021, but what felt like a satisfying ending may not still feel that way; often it does, but sometimes I’m inspired to undertake a revision like the current one, looking for a new ending that hopefully combines logic with some pleasing whimsicality.
How can I hear the new and old versions side by side?
The new version of Canon 4 is here (or use the player at the top of this post); the old version is here. You can also read about my other recent adventures in revision, including my efforts on Canon 18 and Canon 22. ■