The thesis is really coming together these days.  I have the feeling that things are falling into place.  I'm not a big fate-person, but I'm getting lots of hints that things are meant to be a certain way.  Either that, or I have way under-credited my subconscious.

Forgive the technicality of what I'm about to write, but hopefully it will be clearish.

Basically the first thing I did with the concerto was to decide on two contrasting pitch groups.  There are 12 pitches in an octave, so 2 groups of 6 were chosen.  At some point before starting the other movements, I decided I needed some kind of large-scale pitch organization; I decided that with 4 movements, there should be 4 equal distances between the movements - therefore (12/4=3) I would transpose the pitch sets up 3 semi-tones with each movement.

Recently, I decided that I wanted to quote a famous piano concerto, and which better than the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto!  I've been meaning to get the score from the library, but haven't gotten around to it; today I realized that I have a copy on my computer.  The part I want to quote is in D-flat major. 

  The part I want to quote ties into the opening theme of my concerto - while it is not tonal, it fits close enough to an E-major scheme.  The quotation will happen in the fourth movement...

Movement 1 - E Major

Movement 2 - G Major

Movement 3 - B-flat Major

Movement 4 - can you guess...?!?

D-flat Major!  It must be a sign from the gods!

In another way, that feels more directly connected to me, I feel that the material of my concerto is bringing itself together.  I gave myself the challenge of using as few materials as possible for this concerto:

-2 pitch collections, each with a theme attached

-the rhythm and contour of the text and the structure of the poem.

That's basically it - all the musical material in it has been created using only those little seedlings.  I was prepared to and really thought that I was going to need to add things in and create new material left and right, but so far I haven't.  This quotation will be the first 'new' material, and even at that, it fits one of the pitch groups!

Ok, now to do the opposite - dinner, where I will take many many ingredients and turn them into some clump of dinner that tastes rather unexciting!