Selected Musical Compositions
All compositions copyrighted © by Karl Branting
All rights reserved
- Keyboard Works
- 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
- 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
- Marimba Compositions
- 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.