Today I have written “Folk Law” which is a short piece of music scored for three flutes. The aim of the project was to write three independent melody lines which would work together to create a Polyphonic texture.
I thoroughly enjoyed this project. I wrote the piece in C# minor as it is a personal favourite key signature. As the time signature jumps between 4/4, 3/4 and 2/4 it has an interesting uneven feel to it. This meant that I could get some unique phrases within each instrumental line. I originally hand wrote the melody lines and played them on the piano. When I had the melodies and phrases I liked I could feel there would be a medieval feel. This is the reason that I chose three flutes as they match the sound. My next choice would have been recorders.
The Harmony is created by the overlapping of the melodies. I started my piece on the dominant triad of C# minor. We then venture through the chords of F# minor, E minor, D# Major and in bar 13 we have a G#sus9 which though unintended carried a nice dissonant sound to it, so I kept it in.
You will notice that the melodic lines move in contrary motion so that when the intervals in the top line ascend the Melody in the bottom line will descend and vice versa. The middle line will do one of either. Due to the nature of emphasising the the key signature C#, I kept my intervals small in relation to the tonic. This provided a basic level of intonation that appear frequently in that melancholic medieval style of music.
David Healy-Richards Music 