December 2018 Composition Challenge: The No-Fifths Challenge

Hi everyone! Here are the challenges for this month.

Main challenge: Write a piece that avoids chordal movement of a perfect fifth or fourth.

Text challenge: Write a piece inspired by The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams.

The concept of the circle of fifths plays a fundamental role in Western music. Harmonic motion by a perfect fifth (or a perfect fourth, its inversion) is everywhere--like in perfect cadences, or when pieces modulate to the dominant key. The goal of this challenge is to avoid this fifth-centrism, and to explore other intervals for chordal movement. It's perfectly alright to have some motion by fifths, as long as you don't rely heavily on it.

If you like, you can choose a specific interval other than a fifth, like a third or a tritone, and highlight that interval throughout your piece.

If you need some inspiration for this, look into Liszt's late works, or some of the Impressionists.

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Last month, we challenged r/MonthlyComposition to write a piece based on a historical event. Check out the results here.

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What are these challenges?

These challenges are for everyone who wants to practice composing. Each month, at the beginning of the month, we will post a main challenge, something for people to compose. We'll try to make it something that everyone can work with. Sometimes we also have an alternate challenge. We'll also have a text for people to set to music or compose around as they see fit. Pieces can be submitted as a score (musescore, noteflight, pdf), and/or as audio (soundcloud, youtube) linked in a comment on this thread. We encourage positive discussion about the pieces people submit. Feedback on the sub and the challenges is much appreciated, and you can give it in this thread, or by messaging the mods of r/MonthlyComposition, there's also the Challenge Suggestion Form.