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Tuesday 29 November 2005

Work is progressing on my Rabindranath Tagore settings, now provisionally titled Crossing. I’ve reached the 4 minute mark and am still managing to stick to my original decision to use passacaglia as the form and stay in the same key. I have cheated a little and there is at least one interlude passage where the passacaglia is suspended and the choir sings over a held organ pedal. Regarding the key, I have used the fact that when repeating the passacaglia melody I have the option of modulating down a semi-tone at the repeat. Mind you, this caused some problems as we moved from A minor (with added G sharp) to G sharp minor (with added F double sharp). I decided that the F double sharp was a bit dodgy for extended choral singing, so engineered another key change double quick, so currently we’re in G minor (with added F sharp).

I am slightly worried about the general sound world of the piece and whether the vocal parts are easy enough and grateful enough to sing, I don’t want the piece to sound like a struggle. I can see I’m going to have to bash away on the piano for a bit to check that it lies right. I’ll keep you posted.

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