Assignment Three: Tutor Feedback

Overall I was fairly happy with my tutor's feedback, but more importantly I have learnt some things! Having a professional look at your work and tell you where you have hit or missed the mark is invaluable, as it gives you great scope to improve on future efforts. Although I am (understandably) always apprehensive of receiving my assignment feedback, I also always feel energised after absorbing the feedback and being able to fix problem areas for the next assignment.

My tutor praised the 'well-conceived use of character' in the piece, which was a large part of my thinking for this (and all) assignments; I want my pieces to sound good, and be interesting, not just merely technical exercises. The balance between the instruments and the general presentation of the score was also lauded, with comments that my progress in presenting the score is excellent. I was pleased that my tutor found I did a good job of implementing compositional techniques such as imitation, diminution etc, as well as a strong overall structure.

Unfortunately my piece inadvertently didn't quite tally up with the criteria set down in the assignment brief. At the time I was sure I was working to what the brief required, but after reading my tutor's feedback and looking again at my piece I can see that too often my melodic lines are in rhythmic unison, which loses the polyphonic feel of the music. This quote from the feedback sums up the problem nicely while giving pointers for improvement:

'If you look at polyphonic composers, such as Bach or Palestrina, you will notice a sense of rhythmic freedom which goes across barlines and even across the main beats of the bar; syncopation is often a feature of polyphonic music, and it allows the parts to weave around each other without becoming rhythmically fixed. Try experimenting with the positioning of the entries to see if you can bring them closer together, or if you can offset by half a beat here and there. With the slow section it might create some wonderful tensions in the harmony, which may add extra character to the writing'.

The good news is that I can work with the material I have already composed, which has many good traits such as character, balance, and presentation and modify it to more closely resemble a piece of polyphonic music. When I've had a chance to experiment with the work I'll post the (hopefully) improved version to this blog.