Chorale No.1 - Stasis | Score Video

Here's a new composition in a completely different direction to my last! This one returns more to the style of my initial upload, though in a more reduced and minimal format. I've dedicated the piece to Ryuichi Sakamoto, as he was a major source of inspiration for both the piece and also my compositional interests in general. The way he's able to convey such complex emotions with such few notes is something that really resonates with me. As such, this piece almost disregards rhythm, simply focusing on the qualities of each chord one by one. I'll also mention that Takashi Yoshimatsu has been another composer I've been inspired by as of recent, and I think some of his influence has also shown up at times. As the title might suggest, this piece is also supposed to capture that sense of stasis that one might feel when life seems to come to a standstill. I don't feel this often, admittedly, but when it does arise it always feels very intense and impactful. At the same time, the nature of the chords in the outer sections suggests a sort of hope, or contentedness with this feeling. The chords I've used also consist of rather repetitive harmonies, as they are all built off of diatonic notes from the key, and are usually quite clustered and dense (thus including most of the notes from the scale). Oh and there's also the pedal tones in the left hand that contribute to that sense of stillness. I'll be honest, I don't really understand the music theory behind a lot of it since I compose mostly by ear. The middle section introduces some more darkness, which is why I had the score flip colours as a fun little experiment in editing. It does make the score a bit harder to read though, so there is that caveat. I do really like the way I wrote the transition back to the first theme though, that's one of my favourite parts of the piece. And then in the recapitulation it's just a repeat of the first section with some extra flourishes and pentatonic glissandi, ending in a free improvisatory coda that fades into nothingness. I had initially wanted to compose the piece in C# mixolydian, but I must have messed up somewhere since it ends up resolving to F# major at the end lol. Anyway as always, if you have any feedback or comments I'd love to hear them! Thanks for reading and listening, hope you enjoy!