The Chopped-Up Garden | Piano | Isabel Goodwin, 2018
The Chopped-Up Garden was written as part of a challenge in The Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s High School Composition Intensive. We listened to and analyzed Chopin’s Prelude op. 28 no. 6 in b minor, and were given 24 hours to compose a two-page response to the piece. The Chopped-Up Garden took Chopin’s somber feeling in his prelude and expanded on it, through similar 8th note ostinatos and scalar motions. However, I took a more modern spin with my melody, allowing it to drive itself through and away from the quiet gloominess of Chopin’s piece. In some ways, I tried to make it the opposite of Chopin’s piece, using larger intervals and jumps through the melody (as opposed to his more conjunctive motion melodies). Because we only had one day to compose the piece, there are segments that I hope to expand upon in later compositions that I did not have the time to do while in Boston.