Action Piece - Composition Walkthrough Pt.8 - Bars 74-90

This is the final part of digging through the score sheet before we move on to the mockup/production part of this cue. As with all the other parts, I will use score reductions here for clearer overview. The complete score sheet to cross reference is attached at the bottom of the article.

Here's a playback of the reduction from below: 

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-74-90/s-6tQNoZdvwq6

Bars 74-79

The previous bars were already quite high in energy with a tutti stomping away at really high dynamics so the headroom to ramp it up became increasingly smaller with everybody already playing at more or less maximum force. However, in order to bring this piece to a satisfying conclusion I needed to save up something for the end. In this case, I tried to source some additional energy from the rhythmic component of eighth note triplets.

I have established the eighth note triplet quite often already over the course of the piece, particularly by using it in prominent melodic instances like the dark opening fanfare so the rhythmical concept of eighth note triplets is nothing that suddenly appears. However, the whole rhythmical momentum of the piece up to this part relied on a quite strict eighth note grid (with occasional flourishes).

Switching gear to a triplet grid subjectively increases the speed and urgency while triplets in general create a more "rolling" feeling. I used the entire string section including double basses plus low woodwinds (with ocassional breathing rests) in octave unisons which creates a quite intense quality. The scale material is again sourced from the octatonic scale (half/whole) on a. Additional elements include high woodwind stabs doubled with xylophone at off beats to increase the tension and particularly the choice of using the very highest and piercing piccolo notes create some sort of acoustical stabs. The decision to use an f natural here (against the underlaying octatonic scale) was purely intuitive as I just liked it more than F# or E in this context.

Another element is a melodic component in horns and trombones that could be understood as being sourced from previous melodic elements. It repeats the motif from 74/75 exactly a minor third higher in 76/77 which of course works perfectly fine in any octatonic context.

A general structural idea here was to create the feeling of a big I-V-I in the final part with bars 74-77 being the I, 78-79 being the V and 80 onwards being the I again. Of course in an octatonic scale there is neither a proper I nor a proper V chord but it is still possible to create a subjective feeling of such a cadence.

While the triplet figure of bars 74-77 revolve a lot around the "fundamental" pitch of a, in bar 78 and 79 it emphasizes quite heavily the pitch D#/Eb. In the octatonic context I could have even used the E as  the "true" dominant pitch of A. However the Eb a tritone away from A felt more appropriate to me in the context of the piece as a "true" V would just be too "nice" and the Eb serves the function of a subjective V just as well.

Additionally, I stack another "pyramid chord" on top of this rather steady Eb in bars 78/79 consisting of the notes E, A, Bb and Db which could be seen as A/Eb with an additional Bb (all sourced from the octatonic scale). The quite dominant dissonance of the minor ninth between the Eb and the E plus the tritone between Eb and A create a strong enough general dissonance to feel an urge to resolve this harmonic situation to something that feels more "tonicy", ideally back to A.

Bars 80-90

This happens in the following bar with a sfz accent on a low A in all low instruments followed by yet another brass fanfare starting at count two.

An octatonic run in high strings/woodwinds (this time as A whole/half in order to have the f included in the scale which is the first top note of the brass entrance) leads to the entrance of the fanfare. I personally felt that this run leads the ear more smoothly to this brass entrance rather than strating it out of the blue. 

The brass fanfare itself centers once again around the "signature chord" of this piece of a minor triad with its major third in the bass. In this case it would be Fm/A. The contour and rhythmic motifs from this passage again source themselves from similar instances from before in that piece.

It is orchestrated in a way that the trumpet voicing is doubled an octave lower by the horns (with overlap into the lowest trumpet voice and the higher trombone voices - literally connecting both sections).

There is an underlaying pedal note of A in low strings, lowest brass and low woodwinds, reinforced by timpani and bass drum. It re-attacks the a in moments of rhythmical rests of the fanfare (bar 82 and 84) to not let the rhythmical pulse stall for too long. However, in spite of the tempo being the same this whole passage is the first appearance of a rather sustain driven texture without much of a small grid pulse that keeps it pushing forward. It more or less concludes the piece and could figuratively be seen as the last build up of the piece before dieing away in bar 86 with a single low A that keeps fading out into nowhere. 

As mentioned already in a part before, I love giving dynamic shapes to long sustaining brass notes as they are way more interesting and lively than just waiting for the note to end. So the dynamic shape of fp<ff in bars 84-85 creates a way better ramp towards the final note in bar 86.