Exploring "Twilight in the Marshlands"

Twilight in the Marshlands: This motif, I feel is rather soundtrack-like, serious and heavy.

(Note to reader: these are my earlier blogposts heavy in music theory and meandering in thought. I’ll slowly revisit and backlink posts to clarify things.)

The opening harmony could be explained in many ways, but for me i-bvi6-i suffices. I just wondered whether Chopin’s e minor prelude utilizes similar devices: melodic gestures accompanied with descending lines, either in the bass or the middle voices, some chromatic, some diatonic. Perhaps Michael Koch (En blanc et noir YouTube channel) could better explain some romantic schemata or compositional devices.

To peek into this ‘audio dungeon exploration’ before shopping it in the Bandcamp market (for name your gold coins):

Anyway, the 1:25 mark plays with the ambivalence of the augmented triad, resolving perhaps unusually into the minor triad. For the future, I would be interested in exploring Carlo Gesualdo -style harmonies in the format of this piece; or neapolitan school of renaissance madrigal composers in general.

(LilyPond code)

#(ly:set-option 'resolution 200)
\version "2.24.4"
\language "english"
\pointAndClickOff
\header { tagline = "" }
melody = \relative b {
  \repeat unfold 2 { <b d>8 q <b cs> q }
  \repeat unfold 2 { <bf d>8 q <bf c> q }
}
\score {
  <<
    \new Staff { \clef "bass" \melody }
    \new TabStaff \with {} <<
      \new TabVoice { \melody }
    >>
  >>
}

Here’s the recording session video of the piece:

• Wherever The Wind Takes Me