A Little Whimsy, by Dorothy Rudd Moore

A Little Whimsy is a short four-page character piece written by D. Moore in April, 1982. This piece, composed in C major, is appropriate for an early advanced student. Written in ternary form, the piece presents two contrasting characters: a whimsical A section and lyrical, waltz-like, B section. Marked Allegro, the piece opens with a distinctive rhythmic and melodic pattern in left hand, based on two leaps for major and minor sevenths. This pattern represents a whimsical character, and the A section is almost exclusively based on it. Additionally, fragments of the pattern appear in the B section, serving as little interruptions by the whimsical character. Full of chromaticism, the piece consists of a variety of technical difficulties: dense chordal texture, octaves, alternating time signatures, big range of dynamics with rapid dynamic contrasts, and elaborative touches, often not matching. In addition to that, the piece has some easy three-voice polyphony, and therefore might be a good piece with which to teach voicing. 

A Little Whimsy is included in the anthology Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music (1893-1990) edited by Helen Walker-Hill and published by Hildegard Publishing.

Dorothy Rudd Moore (b. 1940) is an African-American composer and educator. Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, Moore began her musical path with studying piano and clarinet, singing in a school choir, and aspiring to be a composer. Her parents fully supported such aspiration, and so Moore ended up studying Composition at Howard University with Mark Flex, in France with Nadia Boulanger, and in New York with Chou Wen Chung. She wrote numerous works which include symphonic works, chamber music, song cycles, one opera, and some piano pieces. Her works are available through the American Composers Alliance. In 1968 she became a co-founder of the Society of Black Composers in New York City. Moore is considered to be one of the leading composers of color that began their musical career in the XX century.

The score is available for purchase at the American Composers Alliance website.

Sources

“Dorothy Rudd Moore.” American Composers Alliance, August 17, 2019.

“Dorothy Rudd Moore.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 29, 2019. 

Lain, Latoya Andriel. “An Examination of the Compositional Style of Dorothy Rudd Moore and Its Relationship to the Literary Influence of Langston Hughes.” Digital Scholarship@UNLV. Accessed December 12, 2019.

Walker-Hill, Helen. From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.