Draft 1
The first step in my composition was deciding on a chord progression and poem. I chose to keep the standard chord progression and the poem 'There Stands a Lonely Spruce Tree'. The poem itself has great contrast between the verses and I wanted to utilise this in my own composition through word painting. I wanted the mood of the piece to reflect the poem and so I chose the minor key of D. Initially, I experimented with a few ideas for the melody, but after a reflection and evaluation of these ideas I found that a simple melody line (as seen) was most effective during the beginning of the lieder as it enabled me to branch out with other ideas later in the piece. |
Draft 2
After establishing the initial melodic idea I continued and finished the first verse. I made sure that my melody correlated with the lyrics which I believe I did successfully. I composed with the melodic shape and contour in mind, as I planned on using this aspect as a major avenue for word painting. The first example of this comes in at bar 7 with the lyrics 'In the North' conveyed by an ascending melodic contour. The following lyrics, 'on a barren hight' I felt had potential for contrast and so I used an ascending crotchet run to convey the 'height' whilst using a b natural despite the key signature to convey the abnormal and unique scene that is portrayed. The scene being a single tree on a 'barren height'. Originally, I used a simple crotchet rhythm in correlation with the lyrics 'swathe him in folds of white' but after reflecting and evaluating I realised that this section of the poem held great potential for contrast and word painting. I decided to employ a descending quaver run to convey to the listener the poem's idea of snow flakes falling down and surrounding this one tree. After reading the poem I felt that the writer was illustrating a light, leisurely fall of snow rather than a fast, blizzard and so I used quavers instead of fast-moving semi-quaver or stagnant crotchets. |