Pointy things

It appears I am late to the party on blogging about my compositional experience this semester, so I'll get right down to catching up on the last few weeks of activity.

Our first assignment in Composition Seminar this semester was to write two character pieces for piano and an instrument of choice that didn't contain any melody or identifiable tune. Having been a violinist for all but the first three years of my life, melody is what I probably feel the most comfortable with in my writing, so this assignment put me a bit outside my comfort zone (which is exactly what I needed).
I hadn't written much for piano either at this point (in fact I'd never written more than three or four bars max), but I did play until I was thirteen so it wasn't totally foreign. However, its incredible how little I remembered about how music was notated for the instrument. This is an area that I feel I could use a lot more score study in.
I paired the piano with my favourite string instrument (yep, it wins over the violin in my books) the cello. In both etudes I chose a few chords that I liked as the main building blocks of the composition to avoid thinking melodically.
The first etude, "Cluttered Dream," came quite easily. I spent most of my time working out ideas on the piano that used a wide range of notes to create an expansive aesthetic with which the cello could converse. What I presented in class wasn't originally intended to be a finished product, but upon listening again the ending seemed like the right one, and the class agreed. There was one small matter of a rhythm that wasn't quite playable in measure 7, which I have since changed to fit the class' recommendation.
The second etude was to be written in a pointillistic style. In my first sketch of the piece, I focussed far too much on horizontal spacing, causing the piece to sound directionless and long winded. I really didn't like what I'd written when it came time to present it to the class, but I got a lot of helpful feedback. One of the recurring motifs that was intended to hold the work together was an aggressive barrage of two groups of 5 eighth notes that began the piece in the high ranges of the piano and reappeared throughout in both the piano and cello. I was hearing my ideas in measures of two beats divided into 5, but notating this was a challenge.
The last measure of the etude seemed to spark the most interest amongst the class and it was recommended that I use that material throughout the piece to tie my disjunct, broadly spaced ideas together. I took that motif and the aggressive 5+5/8 chords/intervals as my primary ingredients and reworked them throughout, and it greatly improved the piece, to my ears. I no longer hate it! Yay!
I look forward to more helpful feedback in class tomorrow morning, this piece assignment has really grown on me.