Composing Spotlight: Labyrinth

Movement IX. Egress

Concluding the walkthrough of my Master's Thesis...

I enjoy ending pieces with lots of flash and finality, and intentionally went in the other direction to close out the final movement of Labyrinth. In this case, I started with the original melody from the first movement:

Like a devil-worshipping 60s band, I then flipped the notes around and played it backwards to create the closing melody:

In spite of the "falling through the movements" feeling I captured, and the meandering nature of the thematic content, the piece is actually very symmetrical, opening and closing in the same place, and allotting similar time slices to the beginning movements as the end movements. This high-level design isn't really noticeable to a listener, but hopefully makes the sum of the movements more satisfying.

Listen to the ninth movement (0:58 MP3)

After three months of score editing and proofreading, I defended my thesis on 3/3/03 at 3 PM, although it was more of a rubber-stamping than a spirited debate. I then moved back to Virginia and put my music masters degee to work writing service-oriented architectures for the DoD.

Jump to Movement: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX