Composing Today

2 February
Today was a rather furstrating day composing. After the late-night I spent at the Bennington reunion I woke and had a hard time concentrating. This continued into my afternoon composing. I’ve been working very hard to try to make the viola solo work and having great difficulty. I’m tempted to stop reshaping it and just rewrite the whole thing. On top of this, I findt he accompaniment rather busy and the overall effect not all that satisfying. I think I can make it work and can give it one more day before I’ll have to let it be. I also today laid out the return of the ritornello discovering the harmonies – the complement of the six in the beginning – that I would use for the section. It’s very strange to hear the measure transmuted into the new harmony. I also sat down and harmonized out the whole section, in much the same manner I did with the original opening. This will then get fed into the computer and transformed likely quite a bit. I think in the second group, I will have less of a running counterpoint – I’m already starting to tire of its busyness and instead work on the instruments fighting over pitches, rather than musical space as a whole. This will I think bookend the slow section, where they will fight over chords, before having, I imagine, some sort of symmetrical close.
Finished reading Crist’s book on Copland, which became increasingly disappointing as it progressed. I always felt that it was a little too dissertation-y and the wiki-paragraphs describing everything she mentioned a bit pedantic. Her analysis of Copland works from the 40s become a bit more hagiographic and less compelling – the analysis of Appalachian Spring basically hews to a script for the ballet that was discarded. Nevertheless, I appreciate the analysis very much and am pleased that someone is trying to work with musical symbols. However, I remain convinced that the key to Copland’s music lies in his film music and a narrative-dramatic approach is the best way to think about the pieces.