Wandering into the Dusky Plains for Winds, Percussion, and String Quartet

Wandering Into the Dusky Plains is a work composed for winds, percussion, and a string quartet in seven movements. It was written to fulfill a portion of the requirements to receive a Master' degree in Music composition from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The composition of the work was completed in December of 2006. All of the orchestration was done during the process of composition and edited later by the composer using Finale 2007. The MIDI realizaton of the score was completed using Logic Express 7.2, Garritan Personal orchestra sound software library, and Virtual drumline sound software library.

This paper will present an analysis of this work and compare it to several pieces of music in recent history that provided some influence on the construction of this piece. The form of the piece, along with melody, harmony, rhythm, and texture will be examined and compared to the following works: Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Bagatelle Op. 6, No. 2, Claude Debussy's Nocturnes: No. 1, Nuages (Clouds), Gunther Schuller's Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, Paul Hindemith's Mathis Der Maler, Maurice Ravel's Bolero, Serge Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5La Creation du Monde.