Name: Ragtime by Jupiter Yiu
Duration: 3 min 29 s
Description: Ragtime was composed when I was in secondary school. It is composed based on the musical style, ‘ragtime’ that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s, by imitating the rhythmic texture, structure, and chords.

H639k62_5 is composed by imitating Bartok’s pieces of folk tunes. A few main folk-like themes are throughout the music, they are mostly singable and dance-like melodic lines. To imitate the improvising sound of folk tunes some trill-like thirty-second notes and tremolos are added to the themes. Although the themes are mostly atonal, there are minor sound variations of the themes in the middle of the piece to form a brief sonata form in the piece.

This piece is a minimalist piece, different from traditional minimalism; this piece explores the repetition of the chromatic scales and the three notes pattern, by transposing the patterns in different ranges of rhythmic duplets or smooth triplets, which constantly appears throughout the piece. 

H639k62_5 focuses on the shifting in beats by placing the accents in different quavers. The mixing of different rhythmic patterns together helps to push and pull the changing rhythms. The music starts with 2 quavers beat pattern, slowly introduces the 3-quavers beat pattern, and takes over the pulse; as a transformation, it developed into a 2-dotted quavers pattern leading to a change in tempo from quaver=90 (dotted quaver=60) to a related slower tempo, quaver=60. The music ends with a mixture of fragmentary 2 and 3 patterns. The music compares in different beats of 2 and 3 including quavers (tempo=90), dotted quavers (tempo=60), triples, and duplets.

H639k62_5

Kj40735_2

Europa is interchange in between romantic tones and atonal tones. The romantic tone is in a slower tempo whilst atonal part is more rhythmic and fast, they are interchange with a jazzy descending melody.

Europa

Io is an experiment in composing an easy ‘child-like’ tune into a more complicated music texture. The idea came up with the inspiration of Villa-lobos’ ‘The Baby’s Family’, which combines the easy tunes into different complicated sounds. In his composition, there are more 
Varieties in rhythms and texture. Io starts with a ‘child-like’ main theme, then going to an atonal theme with a stable base rhythm. There is a sudden apparent off-beat three ascending quavers, which will appear oftenly in the coming passage in different variations, including descending and repeated semi quaver. The main theme is repeating in variations of triplets; breaking into fragments and rearrange into the atonal sound.

Moon and Princess Kaguya is composed based on a Japanese tale Bamboo Cutter. The piece depicts Princess Kaguya travelling back to the moon and recalling the memory of the living of city and palace on the Earth, and the sweetness of family and friends. This composition written in orientalism style applies traditional Japanese scales and intervals to create the feeling of longing while the continuity of repetitive percussive rhythm generates the affection of folk-dance.

Moon And Princess Kaguya

Moon and Princess Kaguya (arrangement)

We Can Make a Different is a rearrangement of a women’s choral song, rearranged into a larger instrumentation of two choral voicings, piano, handbell, and string quartet. Different from normal arrangements, the melody is also variated in the climax to an more ascending appegio, matching a grand climax with the larger instrumentation.

We Can Make A Difference (arrangement of Mary Donnelley)

There are always multiple sights of stuff. From different angles, we can conclude with a different meaning, whiilst the truth is always the same. ‘Sao Kim’ (Venus), ‘Sao Mai’ (Morning Star), ‘Sao Hôm’ (Night Star), they are all just the names of Venus.
I.Sao Kim
Venus is the star representing love and sex, in the fortune-tell of the Western countries, Venus represents the relationship of a person. This movement is a fast movement which represents the come-and-go relationships.						
II.Sao Mai
Morning star means the first rising star in the morning sky which even raises before the moon. In different cultures, morning star has different meanings. In ancient Europe, ‘Lucifer’ (also known as ‘Light-bringer’) is representing the morning star. Lucifer means the devils that call from heaven to underworld. While in traditional Asian culture, it is much more positive than it is known as one of the immortals in Taoism.
III.Sao Hôm
The evening star is bright in the evening sky. It is known as the second brightest object in the evening sky, which follows the moon. In Taoism, the evening star is an immortal that brings good omen to the world.

Sonata In Venus

This piece is the inspiration of the honest project piece, ‘Moon and Princess Kaguya’. It is composed in 2019, it is composed for oboe, tenor saxophone and piano, the instrumentation is imitating the singing and dancing of the national minority in eastern countries.
Uranian Oriental is a piece of expressionism, primitivism and orientalism. This piece is compose based on Heptatonic, Hexatonic and Pelog Scale, they include lot of dissonant notes with accents that is offbeat, it is one of the significant of expressionism music.
In Uranian Oriental, it is a piece that use simple elements juxtaposed with each other forming new ideas. Itprimitively repeating a few elements, including rhythm melodies and patterns, for example, the bass rhythm, three accent sixtieth notes and Pelog scales, etc., forming the whole piece with only one movement.
This piece is composed base on the imagination on the middle east music and dance, also based on the impressions and memory on some middle east music. The impression on folk music is used to be complicated in the rhythm for them to dance with some repeating and singable melody. So I put it in the music of complicated rhythmic pattern and stepwise melody.

Urianian Oriental

Ragtime was composed when I was in secondary school. It is composed based on the musical style, ‘ragtime’ that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s, by imitating the rhythmic texture, structure, and chords.

Ragtime

Jupiter Yiu

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