6810 / 18210 · Workshop 50 — “Nefertiti”: Repetition as Development, Harmonic Motion Under a Fixed Theme, Metric Ambiguity, and Learning to Change the Background Instead of the Melody← prev⊞ allnext →
50.82Mini-composition exercise
Write a theme only one or two bars long.
Repeat it eight times.
You may not alter its pitch sequence.
Across the eight repetitions you must use:
- tonic pedal
- moving bass
- chromatic inner line
- modal upper structures
- different groove
- octave/register change
- harmonic climax
- sparse return
If the listener feels a complete journey while the theme hardly changes, you've succeeded.