this one was also written for the "tonality at the fringe" class. I started on it after "Confrontations" was mostly done; I think of it as a sort of companion/epilogue to that piece.
here's the essay I submitted with this piece:

This is a piece for viola and piano inspired loosely by the Marion Bauer piece “Up the Ocklawaha” and taking cues from various other pieces we studied. My primary aim in writing this piece was to deploy a variety of techniques to arrange relatively “tonal”, consonant-sounding sonorities in unexpected and unusual ways, while maintaining a sort of coherent overall structure.
Similarly to some of the Chopin pieces we studied, the piece uses root motion by thirds extensively, often to the effect of evading the emergence of a single obvious key center. Often, harmonies are simply transposed by a third or by a semitone (maintaining their quality, if sometimes re-voiced); e.g. mm. 6-7, 16-17, 26-27.
In place of a clear tonic center, the piece derives harmonic coherence from some motives that appear in different transpositions. In this regard I took some inspiration from the Ravel violin and cello sonata, whose harmonic content was often most accessible via its themes (even in more dissonant territory, which I only begin to explore towards the end of the piece). The most prevalent motive is the ascending triplet figure, a semitone followed by a whole tone. This appears first at m. 6, as part of a secondary theme at m. 15, in the piece’s climax at m. 45, and elsewhere. The piece also employs sequential perfect fourths and fifths extensively throughout, in both melodic and accompaniment parts. Sometimes, a sequence of fourths or fifths is followed by a step in either direction by a whole tone. The themes are broadly constructed from this material. The viola’s climb from low to high register in the final few bars of the piece explicates this idea, clearly alternating perfect fourths and whole tones. Like the harmonic motion by semitones and thirds, this perfect fourths/fifths technique often evades analysis relative to a key center.
The piece also uses mixed meter and varying phrase lengths. We have discussed how a listener’s tonal expectations can be associated with hypermeter. I aimed in this piece to use rhythm and meter to confound expectations about the timing of harmonic changes. An example of this is the accompaniment figure from 14-21, which seems at first predictable, but cuts some phrases short and lengthens others.