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Pastoral

Musical

Example

Pastoral

Secret

Score

Pastoral

Animated

Score

Melody

Now that we have our harmony in place, it's time to compose a melody over it. Because of the richness of the strings - both in timbre and harmony - we need to balance our sound by using an instrument with a similarly rich timbre. The clarinet is a perfect choice to play our melody. Its rich sound also expresses itself delicately when needed. We start the melody just as soon as we've established the first chord. A quick study of the melody in bars 1 and 2 reveals that the clarinet plays only notes from our rich harmony – with the exception of our root note F:

When the clarinet ends its phrase in bar 3, it holds a note found in our first string chord as well as in the new chord in bar 3. When we return to our original harmony in bars 5 and 6, the clarinet uses all the harmony notes in its melody:

When we move to our final harmony in bar 9, the clarinet once again plays a melody consisting of all the harmony notes:

It should be noted that the rhythm of the melody is a combination of slow and fast moving notes. This helps to mirror the duality of nature – it is both restful and active.