Composing Today
12 February 2007
I worked today on the clarinet solo leading into an oboe solo section. I have now a real sense of where the piece is going to go for the next thirty or so measures and it will require some long term planning. My feeling is that here we are in the slow section of the piece and here we can really allow the colors of the various trios to speak, as they do in the oboe area. There are a series of harmonies that begin to skew microtonally. The solos in this section aren’t virtuosic solos in a traditional sense but instead they play between the notes of the harmonies. I’ve reached a merge and now will split up again into four layers reaching toward another merge. In terms of the long-term planning, what I’d like to do is to set up the entire length of the sections of this third tempo merge and actually mark out the rhythmic points that would create this merge, from there I can add the harmonies that will keep the tension alive. I have a vision of a two or three minute arch or more perhaps before the entry of the third ritornello, which I’ve decided will have a much more dirty sound. From there I’d like to bring back some of the material from the solos in switched instrumentation, particularly some of the opening percussion figures in the brass, which I think will be quite exciting.
I’m thinking of this piece as another example of a dynamic form. I’ve come to the conclusion that the old return of initial material at the end of the piece is in fact a rather dull and programmatic form – it doesn’t imply any sort of dynamism, but instead posits a system in which things don’t change. In reality, in our lives and elsewhere, things change, shit happens, and we come out differently, that’s the wonder of the journey. I’d like my musical forms to have this sort of dynamism. I think this is a lesson I learned from Jonathan Kramer who first suggested it. I recall asking him what were some solid examples of pieces that had such dynamic forms and he read me well suggesting Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, in which there are various episodes that follow one another in an almost cinematic fashion and that add up to more than their individual parts. I recall also an analysis of the same work that Betsy Jolas presented nearly fifteen years ago in which she spoke of the piece being various litanies by various parts of the ensemble, she used the Debussy memorial piano piece of Stravinsky’s (which formed the basis of the wind chorale at the end of the piece) as almost musicological evidence.
I worked today on the clarinet solo leading into an oboe solo section. I have now a real sense of where the piece is going to go for the next thirty or so measures and it will require some long term planning. My feeling is that here we are in the slow section of the piece and here we can really allow the colors of the various trios to speak, as they do in the oboe area. There are a series of harmonies that begin to skew microtonally. The solos in this section aren’t virtuosic solos in a traditional sense but instead they play between the notes of the harmonies. I’ve reached a merge and now will split up again into four layers reaching toward another merge. In terms of the long-term planning, what I’d like to do is to set up the entire length of the sections of this third tempo merge and actually mark out the rhythmic points that would create this merge, from there I can add the harmonies that will keep the tension alive. I have a vision of a two or three minute arch or more perhaps before the entry of the third ritornello, which I’ve decided will have a much more dirty sound. From there I’d like to bring back some of the material from the solos in switched instrumentation, particularly some of the opening percussion figures in the brass, which I think will be quite exciting.
I’m thinking of this piece as another example of a dynamic form. I’ve come to the conclusion that the old return of initial material at the end of the piece is in fact a rather dull and programmatic form – it doesn’t imply any sort of dynamism, but instead posits a system in which things don’t change. In reality, in our lives and elsewhere, things change, shit happens, and we come out differently, that’s the wonder of the journey. I’d like my musical forms to have this sort of dynamism. I think this is a lesson I learned from Jonathan Kramer who first suggested it. I recall asking him what were some solid examples of pieces that had such dynamic forms and he read me well suggesting Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, in which there are various episodes that follow one another in an almost cinematic fashion and that add up to more than their individual parts. I recall also an analysis of the same work that Betsy Jolas presented nearly fifteen years ago in which she spoke of the piece being various litanies by various parts of the ensemble, she used the Debussy memorial piano piece of Stravinsky’s (which formed the basis of the wind chorale at the end of the piece) as almost musicological evidence.
Labels: composing
posted by Todd Tarantino at
8:24 PM
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