Creative Artefacts

The Extracts Project

Project List

---

The Project

OVERVIEW OF THE EXTRACT PROJECT



Included with this sheet are a number of examples from a variety of pieces which you may be
studying this semester, and extracts from a couple of poems.

You should compose an original composition for agroup of not less than four instrumentalists
which include between four and six of these extracts.

The extracts may be transposed, re-orchestrated or placed in other rhythmic environments, but
should not be otherwise changed unless specifically stated.

The poems may be used as material.  They count as one extract.

Compositions should be about 2-4 minutes in length.  Scores should be written in C.


Webern 	Concerto
Stravinsky	Symphonies of Wind
Ligeti		Double Concerto/Chamber Concerto
Reich		Desert Music
Birtwistle	Verses for Ensembles/Yan Tan Tethera
Antheil	Ballet Mechanique

EXAMPLE PROJECT (POEMS) OPTIONS

option 1:
set the following to music for singer/speaker and instrumental ensemble of your choice:

Black was the without eye
Black was the within tongue
Black was the heart
Black the liver, black the lungs
Unable to suck in light
Black the blood in its loud tunnel
Black the bowels packed in furnace
Black too the muscles
Striving to pull out into the light
Black the nerves, black the brain
With its tombed visions
Black also the soul, the huge stammer
Of the cry that, swelling, could not
Pronounce its sun.

from
Two Legends
from
Crow - From the Life and Songs of the Crow
Ted Hughes


option 2:
set the following to music for singer/speaker and instrumental ensemble of your choice:

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of the gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
				A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers.  As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
				Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.


Option 3:
set the following to music for singer/speaker and instrumental ensemble of your choice:

When a Poet Loves a Composer
One look at him and I forgot,
Embarrassingly soon,
That music ought to have, if not
Lyrics, at least a tune.

He's highbrow in a big, big way
But when he sees that I'm
The one, he'll think that it's okay
For poetry to rhyme.

Her Kind of Music
Her kind of music was a song
About a broken heart,
While his was complicated, long,
And labelled 'modern art',

With links to the chromatic scale,
The opera he wrote,
To her ears, was a tuneless wail
Upon a single note.

She struggled to acquire his taste
(As frequently occurs),
While, with enthusiastic haste,
He did away with hers.

Good luck!