Music 471

Impressionism assignments Due: Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Step one: spend an hour reading through the handout, which I neglected to mention are from
Ludmila Ulehlas Contemporary Harmony textbook. Make note of
Then spend 5 hours total on the following.. You may do three or four short pieces, or two
extended works based on two of the examples. Do not do only one.
Choose from the following:
1) Write a slow melody for solo violin that keeps the same tonic but moves freely, though
consciously, between the Dorian, Phrygian and Lydian modes. Label which modes you
are using at the various points in the melody. Do not range beyond A above the staff.
2) Write a duet for two cellos using the whole tone scale. You may switch between the two
versions of the scale, so sometimes one cello could be in one scale, the other cello in the
other.
3) Write a duet for two violins that makes extensive use of the tritone, without resolution.
Try to play between intervals of perfect fifths and fourths, and the tritone. Make this a
slow, painful adagio.
4) Write a piece for piano and trumpet. The piano should play a series of dominant seventh
and half diminished seventh chords (the minor triad with added sixth), moving freely
around the keyboard without resolution, in the manner of Debussy. The trumpet melody
should be lyrical and be based on the notes of the harmony, with non-chord tones
consciously placed either as passing tones or as appoggiaturas that resolve into chord
tones on an offbeat.
5) Write a piece for two cellos and two violins that feature tone clusters interspersed
between tonal harmonies.
6) Write a work for piano and any solo instruments at our disposal (violin, cello, trumpet).
The piano should feature chord progressions that move progressively upwards and
downwards by minor and/or major thirds. The chords should be chords with added sixths,
ninths and elevenths (o the Ulehla handout, pp. 229f).
7) Write a piece for solo voice, on a text of your choosing, and piano. The piano harmonies
should be impressionistic, ie making use of extensive parallelisms, unresolved
dominant sevenths and dominant ninth chords, half-diminished seventh chords and whole
tone harmonies.
The final examples are from the Ulehla handout. They give a little more to work with, if you
dont wish to start from complete freedom.
8) Write a choral piece for SATB that makes use of the harmonic progression in the Ulehla
handout, page 242, example C. Choose an appropriate text.
9) Complete the Sarabande or the Satire on page 244, example 251a or b.

10) Harmonize the melody page 243, example 250b, of Ulehla. Harmonize at the piano, or
harmonize with a string quartet (two violins and two celli).