T. 48--Through An Airplane Window

This is the first of a series of compositions I wrote for my Music 188 class at BYU. It was a 100-level compositions class. I thought the class would cover conventional compositional techniques. Instead, the class focused on compositions and techniques from the past 40 years. The teacher emphasized new music, and the professor gave us prompts that encouraged us to write music that went outside the conventions of classical music. It was weird at first, but I enjoyed it in the end. It was neat to break boundaries and try new ideas. 

One of our assignments was to write a choir piece that would be performed by the whole class. We could choose our own prompt but the piece had to be simple enough to perform with no previous rehearsal. I created my own prompt for this piece: Give the conductor a performing part as well. I made the piece really easy by restricting each singing part to only three notes. The concept behind this piece is the view I’ve often enjoyed while looking through an airplane window. Those views have inspired me for years; they are simply gorgeous and breathtaking. At first I titled this piece A Window Seat, but I changed the title to make it more descriptive of my concept. The overall sound is ambience, with soft beat boxing by the conductor. 

An interesting note about the melody (the soprano part) in measures 7–10 of this piece: I thought it was an original melody until my roommate at the time pointed out that it was Epona’s Theme from the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I decided then that I should be more careful in the future about the origins of the melodies I use.