T. 2--Chess Masterpieces

This is a series of six compositions, each based on a piece in a chess game. The title, Chess Masterpieces, is a play on the word pieces with regards to game pieces and pieces of music. These compositions were created as part of my Bot Island universe because I imagined live, life-size chess pieces joining the action. I also used “Pawn Play,” “King’s Crusade,” and “Knight’s Knock” for an assignment in my ninth grade English class. The assignment was to create a soundtrack for Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet.” Following is a statement for each of the six music compositions I collectively call Chess Masterpieces, along with the dates in which they were written. 

 

1.      King’s Crusade—June 17, 2005

I knew octaves and fifths sounded regal and majestic, and that’s what I was going for with this composition. I intended for this piece to provoke an image of a king riding off on a mission, an adventure, a crusade. On the electric keyboard, I always used brass sounds.

2.      Queen Quarrel—Feb. 13, 2005

There is a quarrel because quarrel and queen begin with the same letter. You may have noticed my use of alliteration in naming these pieces. I was also a huge fan of perfect fifths because I liked the strong sound, so I used them a lot. I had a theme in my head what sounded angry and confrontational, so I used it here. I used string sounds (string ensemble) when I played this on the keyboard.

 

3.      Rook Rage—Jun. 2, 2006

With this theme, I imagined huge castle towers picking themselves up and stomping on everything in sight. Rooks were always my favorite chess piece because of the look of their strong base and their ability to ram into things head on. I tried to invoke that image here. For this piece, I also used string sounds. 

 

4.      Bishop Battle—Jul. 4, 2005

For some reason, I imagined chess bishops as wizards that use magic spells on the battlefield. I came up with measures 1–9 with that image in mind. Everything after measure 9 was taken directly from something I heard my dad whistling at the time (with slight variation on measure 13 and mm. 21–25). He seemed to have it in his head for a couple of days because he just kept whistling it. I wanted to use it for this composition, so I asked him where he heard that theme from. He said he couldn’t remember or he didn’t know. Since we didn’t have any original source for the theme, I took my dad’s response as a sign that I could and should use it. I used brass sounds for this piece.

5.      Knight’s Knock—May 24,  2005

This was one of the first chess “pieces” to be composed. I didn’t intend for this to represent knights, but I called it “Knight’s Knock” later because the repetitive lower part could be considered a knock and knight begins with the same sound as knock. Apart from that, this piece, which could be appropriately labeled as a lullaby, has nothing to do with my image of knights. Though after I put the title on this piece, I had the image in my mind of two knights knocking on the castle doors with their weapons as a signal to get the door open and once the doors opened they would ride out onto the castle grounds and into the sunset, kind of an unusual yet romantic image, don’t you think? On the keyboard, I used a “vib pad” sound, which is best replicated acoustically on a vibraphone. 

6.      Pawn Play—Dec. 24, 2005

This is another early tune that wasn’t originally intended for a chess “piece.” I had this tune in my head for months before I wrote it down and put a title on it. I thought “Pawn Play” would be a fitting title to invoke an image of the pawns playing fighting games as training for battle. I really liked the way the repeated theme sounded against the repetitive D, and I think this piece is as simple and light-hearted as I imagined chess pawns (rookies in training) to be. For this piece, I often used a synth sound, so a piano can serve as an acoustic alternative.