Selected Musical Compositions

All compositions copyrighted © by Karl Branting
All rights reserved

Keyboard Works
- Waiting for Laura Rag
- Sonatina
- Prelude in C
  This piece was inspired by Prelude 1, book 1, of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, but with a harmonic vocabulary extended to include quartal harmony.
- Marie Waltz
Ensemble Pieces
- Ceremony
  Scored for voices, marimba, music box, vibes, brass, and pan pipes, this composition explores gamelan-style interlocking chromatic percussion lines.
- Wind Trio
  Fangorn Wold is a wind trio inspired by an episode in Tolkein's Ring Trilogy in which Merry and Pippin hide in the animated forest of Fangorn Wold.
- Duet for Clarinet and Bassoon
Fugues
- Fugue in B minor
- Fugue in E minor
Parodies
- The Real Smart Agent This is a parody of The Real Slim Shady, written when I was working on a dialogue system for LiveWire Logic, a.k.a. RealDialog, a North Carolina startup acquired in 2006. The song has references to Extempo, Bob, Ananova, Smarter Child, Ask Jeeves, and other dialogue agents of the time, most of which are now defunct. Some of the young engineers at LiveWire Logic discovered that the animated female dialog agent of a competitor could be talked into talking off her blouse but that this revealed only a wire frame torso underneath.
Songs
- When God Lets My Body Be, words by E.E. Cummings
- All In Green, Went My Love Riding, words by E.E. Cummings
- Take, O, Take, words by W. Shakespeare
Marimba Compositions
- Toccata
- Fifty Variations on an 8-note Theme
Childrens' Compositions
These pieces were written as recital pieces for my son, Eric, when he was studying the piano. He composes music himself now, e.g., Just Like Clockwork, and is studying music technology at NYU.
Teenage Compositions
These pieces were composed when I was in high school and my first years of college.
- Graduation March Written for the Hinkley High School 1970 graduation. Performed by Glenn Chambers (now music professor at the Conservatoire de Paris) and Yvonne Zamora. Arranged here for winds
- Bugle An experiment in bitonality: a trumpet that likes only black notes meets a piano that insists on white.
- Longing An expression of adolescent emotion
- Minuet and Fugue Baroque musical forms with added chromaticism
- Morning
- Etude An exercise in thematic development, written in a basement practice room at Williams Village, at CU Boulder campus.
- Prelude
- Night Performed in a recital in 1969 at Hinkley High School.