Enchanted Island

Description

Enchanted Island is a piano piece by Stephen C. Doonan, a composer who has contributed his own works to the Mutopia Project. It is listed as a late twentieth-century work, but details of how it came to be written are not available, so this introduction keeps to what the score and the data show. It is better heard for its sound than read for a particular story behind the title.

It is in 6/8, felt as two broad beats to the bar, and that rocking pulse runs through the whole piece. Partway through the key signature changes, and the colour of the harmony shifts clearly. The range is wide, from E-flat 1 to B-flat 6, and both hands travel across most of the keyboard. It lasts about two and a half minutes and contains just over 1,100 notes.

It is rated advanced. The notes are split almost evenly between the hands, so neither hand simply leads while the other accompanies, and the 6/8 flow has to be kept throughout. Use the hand colours to see what each hand is given, and loop the passage around the change of key signature with the A-B loop to get a feel for the change of scene. The lowest note sits just below a 76-key keyboard and no octave shift fits the range, so plan on an 88-key instrument.

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