Blog Entry 5/10: I am planning to combined a few tasks including developing my composition scaffolding, creating a "mixed bag" arrangement of a piece and also composing my own piece all within the style of minimalism. I have been doing this topic recently with Year 11 and Year 10 and as the music is so accessible, they respond really well to this and enjoying the "classical" repertoire. I would like to include my "mixed bag" arrangement within my composition resource guide and have been looking at the below works to decide which would be best. Having the students play an exemplar piece before composing in the style I believe is a great way to both understand and experience the piece plus generate some ideas.
After much deliberation there were pros and cons for both. John Adams "Short Ride in the fast machine" provides so much to consider as a compositional model in terms of structure, harmonic evolution, layers of instruments, use of ostinato and introducing melody and bass lines. However as a work, it is quite complicated and I would need to simplify many of the elements to get to a classroom arrangement. While Philip Glass' Glassworks Closing is much simpler, is still provides the essence of minimalistic features. It has a 2 against 3 rhythmic ostinato, harmony lines, very slight changes in ostinato notes shifting the harmonic progression and provides much space to develop a mixed bag arrangement that can also include an area to include improvisation. For this main reason I have chosen to base my composition model and mixed bag arrangement on Closing.