Variations on America II: Rational Miserliness Boogaloo is a theme-and-variations piece based on My Country, 'Tis of Thee which was a class assignment for Theory IV in my sophomore year at SMU. The name is a reference to Charles Ives's Variations on America, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Karl Marx. I became quite fixated upon this assignment as it combines three loves of mine: interpreting and arranging material, satirizing America, capitalism, and patriotism, and the intersections of both. This piece's progression can easily be seen as a narrative, although that is not its primary constructing lens - I wanted to really extend the theme out where it should not be going a la Ives's 'ranchero' section (3:57 in the above link), hence my use of 10/8, a very weepy tremolo section, and a segue into the Prichard hymn Hyfrydol which I was familiar with as Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus. This culminates in a section which requires a... healthy budget to realize, but such should be expected and is indeed a highly necessary feature of a piece like this!