21 February 2009

Composing: fragments from "The Wanderer" and my new piece for guitar and mandolin

I’ve begun and am now more than halfway done with a work for soprano and nine instruments based on fragments of the old English poem “The Wanderer.” I decided to use transcriptions (creative transcriptions) of wind sounds recorded at various places around the world – among them the ruins of Tughlaq’s palace in Delhi, the Turfan depression in China and others to develop chords and from there composed more or less freely. It is a very strong powerful work that I’m having a great time writing and am proud of. Shockingly it is among the more rhythmically simple of my pieces. I’ve taken little phrases and words here and there from the poem, so to say it is a setting of The Wanderer would be wrong – instead it is a setting of my feelings about the poem in general viewed at through the lens of memory. The text is an instrument, perhaps for the sentiments. One aspect of the poem that seems to be among the more salient is that of decay – the poem has a happy ending per se, but I’ve avoided that part. I’ve decided to enact that in a structure of changing instrumentation – different instruments will drop out with each section become “wanderers” if you will, joining with the voice or going off on their own. I’m quite pleased with it and hope to have it finished by mid-March. No performance scheduled or in the works – any takers?

After working diligently for several months, I decided to take a break from the guitar/mandolin piece in early January as things had reached a point of wrapping up. I was still unsatisfied with the piece and thought that some time away would allow me to return to it with a fresh perspective. Parts that I liked had begun to be changed beyond recognition, I had eliminated parts that I felt didn’t work in an effort to see if they were necessary and so forth. Ultimately, I think time away is the right idea.
I sat down yesterday and listened to what was there of the score and remained dissatisfied. Last night, I got up in the middle of the night with an I’d like to try out on it. First, create a version of the score that is simply the two parts and then two blank staves underneath – to make the composing over easier. Then consider the structure – making it more codified in a form of Introit, Sostenuto and Dance. Reinstate some of the introit figures which I always felt worked well as a beginning. Redo the middle section in order to create the thing that I felt I could never get from the ensemble – sustained pitches. Rewrite it so that it is a sustaining section in beautiful harmonies. The final dance section can be just that. Perhaps three movements instead of one? Or else divide the one movement into three movements with mock tuning and instrument arguments – in this way the performance becomes a part of the piece. Perhaps this will save the piece – the other option is to create a series of ephemeral moments – jumping in in the heat of action perhaps. I think I’ll try the first now and if that doesn’t work, try the second later.

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06 October 2008

Composing Today

A full day of work on the guitar/mandolin piece. I was exploring more the concept of translation today – how can we make it work with a musical experience. Sure, with a physical experience I can take the essence of it and morph it into a structure or concept. With this piece, I want to reflect on the blind man of Urumqi playing his erhu down the street. The idea translates to the ensemble here in the concept of blindness – the surroundings may change but he will still remain walking the changing streets of China and playing the beggar’s fiddle, one of the oldest instruments in the country. To create the blindness, I retuned the guitar and mandolin to create an instrument that is the same physically (the alleys and anes that he walks) but that has a different existence – the pitches here are different though the streets are the same – to mix several metaphors simultaneously. Let’s go further and reflect on a musical experience, to translate the musical experience I can reflect on what works for me in the piece musically and then do something with those to create something new based on the musical parameters of something else. In this case, I’m not particularly interested in the musical parameters – he plays a relatively simple pentatonic song, with the addition of one grace note and a slide. It is his feeling that is what is interesting. Instead, I’ve decided to transcribe the gestures of the player – he has six positions on the instrument, plus the open string, that he moves between depending on the note he’s playing. I mapped this geography onto the instruments I’m writing for and from there chose little figures duplicating the rhythm – so the players here are playing his song on their new instruments, or at least the gestures of his song.
I’ve been playing around with the piece for a few hours today and have about a minute and a half of music – very rhythmic making full use of the open strings. I still don’t have much sense of the piece. The erhu player plays a song that is ABA, with the first and last phrases essentially duplicating each other. Perhaps I should simply map this structure onto the guitar/mandolin piece, which would mean that I have an A section and need to simply develop a B section and another A section and the piece is finished except for the crazy remapping of it back onto the guitar/mandolin. We’ll see where it goes.
In other news, I’ve found that the best way for me to hear it fully is to save it as a midi version on one track – this keeps similar sounds and the quarter-tones, which I’ve beenhaving a hell of a time getting on my nasty-looking four-staff finale version.

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23 September 2008

Composing Today

23 September 2008
A little history: about a year ago I received an email out of the blue from the Duo Ahlert and Schwab asking if I would write a piece for their mandolin guitar duo. It seems these folk are the foremost mandolin-guitar duo in Europe and like modern music and especially American composers. I wrote back and said I’d write something small by Christmas of this year. I’ve finally come to embrace the idea of writing this piece – on the one hand I have no performances scheduled and any performance is a good one especially if it gets me to write a new piece. I began to think about the instruments and realized that I could actually get some serious harmonies out of these two fretted instruments especially if I retuned the strings. So I began exploring the retuning possibilities of the instruments.
If we begin with the guitar, one problem I encountered was no matter how I tweaked the tuning I still ended up with that awful fourth-laden sonority that defines the guitar. I realize now that the problem was result of the fact that I was approaching the tuning from the wrong direction – I was trying to get the most quarter-tones I could get out of the combination of the instrument rather than rethinking the instrument completely. So today, I began trying to rethink the pitch continuum of the guitar. Guitars are normally tuned E-A-D-G-B-E which is a two octave span; 24 semitones or 48 quarter tones. I thought that what I should do to the guitar is divided this space up evenly. Thus the five intervals between pitches would be divided into the 48 quarter tones which obviously is uneven. So if I expand the space to 50 – I could tune in equal 10 quarter tones orfive semi-tones or P4 which sounds like the guitar. Instead I shrunk the space and tuned it in equal 9/4 tones: E – Aqb – C# - Fq – A# - Dq – this actually changes the sound of the instrument.
For the mandolin we usually tune in fifths like the violin: G-D-A-E. Instead I thought to again retune the space. My choices were equal 15/4 or 13/4 intervals. 13/4 intervals tend to sound a hell of a lot like tritones, but 15/4 intervals have their own special sound and that’s what I’ve currently chosen: Gqb – D – Aq – F. The other thought that comes to me now is to tune the mandolin like the guitar – thus with a smaller interval between strings 2 and 3, something like: G-Eb-Ab-E or something with quarter-tones, perhaps I’ll experiment with that as well.
I was talking with Carla about the poetic concept for the piece and the image that kept coming back to me was of a blind man we saw in Urumqi. He was being led around by his wife and was playing the erhu, she held a bucket to collect coins; most people gave. What is striking about this image in the context of the retuning of the guitar is that for this man, and for the blind, he could have been walking this path for fifty years playing his erhu. His path remained the same, but the environment around him changed – thus for the guitar and mandolin players we have a similar thing – they are strumming their strings but the instrument is different – the environment of sound is different though the fingerings and strummings are the same.
I realize also in retuning these instruments that we have then three separate pitch worlds possible: the tempered world; the quarter-tone world and the fusion of the two. Perhaps I can work something out whereby the environment moves from one to another. We’ll see.
Today I composed out some rhythmic sections that may make it into the final work – likely toward the end. We’ll see about that as well.

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19 June 2008

Beginning Kempe

Kempe Notes

I’ve begun reading the Margery Kempe book in the hopes of somehow making it into a piece. My initial thoughts are that it will prove hard to make this into a seven or eight minute work. I’m thinking it may have to be something longer – on the order of twenty minutes or so, but this is really preliminary. Today, I read the episode where Kempe begins her series of pilgrimages, first to Jerusalem and then to Rome. After a fairly standard leave-taking – she has the priest announce her leave and call for any debtors to take some sort of payment as these were dangerous trips and many died. She then confesses, during the confession her priest suggests to her that when her faith will be most shaken she will receive the help of a “broken-backed man” in the Middle English “brokebakkyd man” who eventually turns out to be an Irish pauper named Richard. On the pilgrimage she is as I remembered basically ostracized from the rest of her countrymen who grow tired of her constant crying and her desire to bring up godly things at their meals: they would rather make merry at lunch and dinner – effectively Margery is a downer. Nonetheless, she is much admired by the religious whom she meets particularly the Franciscan friars who controlled many of the sights that were part of a standard pilgrimage. She parts company from this group several times, but as is the case on these things, they meet up again at other points. I recall myself when I did the pilgrimage to Compostela that you would lose your group and then eventually join up with them again later. The company, as much as they hate her, seem to believe her – if she decides to take a different ship (on advice from Jesus) the group of Englishmen follow.
The difficulty is going to be pulling a text out of all this. Margery doesn’t do much talking, mainly we hear about how she cried and cried – I’ve come to accept that this crying is sobbing crying, not shouting out crying in the manner that the man who shouts “Hallelujah” on my corner in New York cries. I take this from a passage which tells why she cried – in much the same way that people cry if a friend dies, etc see page 52 in the Staley translation. This is obviously a major part of her personality and should be incorporated somehow and in a way that cannot be trite, for her crying was not trite.
Other things that may be incorporated – the way she is a called a “creatur” or the constant admonishing and calming voice of the various Godly voices, perhaps set off with a different accompanying group or a tattoo of sorts in the manner that Stravinsky brings in God’s voice with a bass duet announced by a quick drum rap in “The Flood.” I’m also enamored of the device of the scribe and wonder if there is a way to put that into the piece, as well as strange notes that appear sometimes like this one at the end of chapter 16: “Rede fyrst the twenty-first chapetre and than this chapetre aftyr that.” - it puts a certain sort of indeterminancy in the reading, like a choose-your-own-adventure book, or Structures Book 2 of Boulez.
Ultimately the whole thing will be in Middle English, or else I can use the language as a way of differentiating – putting Kempe’s words in Middle English and translating the rest into my own words – thereby obviating copyright issues as well.

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22 February 2007

Composing Today

23 February

I’ve taken the piece to a very strange place, what I think will effectively bring in the noisy third ritornello. After the ensemble slows down and becomes one, I was able to incorporate a sound that to me is reminiscent of the Laotian mouth organ I heard an old man play in a Thai village. This is tied in through the use of the 5, 7 and 11 quarter-tone cycles. This struggles with the cyclic harmonies which eventually reach a culmination point with the entrance of the piano on the cluster chords from the meltdown section of the second ritornello. The ensemble doesn’t give up so easily and with the piano clustering in the middle of the keyboard the entire ensemble plays fff an unbelievably dissonant chord built from the 11-quarter-tone cycle. This repeats after a pause, is joined by the powerful percussion on the skinned percussion before the entire ensemble takes up the original percussion figure from the blocks – transposed to various levels. From there the third ritornello will enter. I will have to work to compose it out. We are at about the 8:30, 8:45 point in the piece (on the realization) in real life its probably more like 10:00, I’m thinking the third ritornello will be quick before the next three relatively short sections and the culminating ritornello. Perhaps this noise chord will overtake the structure, eating away at it before the final ritornello. I’m also thinking that the three final solos – for Cello, Violin and Horn will make use of an extremely limited palette of pitches.

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Composing Recently

21 February 2007

It has been quite some time since I wrote in this. This is not because I haven’t been composing. On the contrary, I’ve actually been composing quite a bit. I’ll try to tie up what has happened in the past week.
After laying out the scaffolding for the slowing down section, I attempted to compose it at the piano, printed out on a smaller sheet. This ended up being a bad idea for several reasons, especially because I wanted to compose out a section that comprehensively deals with a quarter-tone harmonic system. My plan was to build chords on each entry point for each layer of the rhythms and I began with that plan. To tie it together in a somewhat neoclassical mode (but without the attendant irony) I thought to treat this as a development section and use the quarter-tone equivalent of a circle-of-fifths progression to propel the harmonies of the piece along, I would cycle through a circle of five-quarter tones, assigning one pitch to each accent in the slowing down polyrhythm, when I reached the end of the five-quarter cycle, I, instead of returning to the opening pitch used it as a pivot into a seven-quarter tone pitch space cycle, again at the end, before returning to the original pitch, I pivoted into an eleven-quarter-tone pitch space cycle. In all these instances before entering the new pitch space I repeated the chord that had been held. After reaching the end of the eleven-quarter-tone pitch cycle, I moved back through parts of the cycles I had already traversed – the exact details are in my sketches. Why these cycles? Well, the 5, 7 and 11 quarter-tone cycles are the only ones that will cycle through all the quarter-tones within the chromatic scale without repeating any pitches. I actually have yet to finish up the cycles.
Eventually on doing this, I realized that it would not be necessary to assign triads for each of the accent points, I could just allow the cyclic pitches to speak for themselves, extending them where the overall harmonies would be more pungent. This is where I’ve been.
Over these shifting harmonies, I applied a radically different set for the solos, for trumpet, then bass, then trombone. These solos are limited in their pitches – the trumpet uses only six, the bass is similar. So borrowing a phrase from the percussion part, I’ve redone it for the trumpet and then for some of the bass. The bass alternates low pizzicatos with high quarter-tone harmonics before bowing out with the four open strings, the trombone simply plays long tones around F – its primary pitch.
On Monday I met with my old teacher Stephen Siegel, perhaps one of America’s finest relatively unknown composers – his new String Quartet really begs to be heard. Steve is also a fabulous teacher and on hearing the piece urged me to trim down and cut out various parts, cleaning up the piece more to make it more sleek, more differentiated. I’m not sure that I agreed with all of his suggestions, but I did implement a number of them and have put a fresh eye and ear to the opening ritornello, making subtle changes that serve to really enhance the work. This took a few days.
Today was/is Ash Wednesday and I have been busy playing organ in New Jersey. Tomorrow I must really get down to serious, more serious work, as I was only able to clean some things up today. My time is fading and I need to make the most of it. There is still a good deal of music that needs to be written.

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14 February 2007

Composing Today

13/14 February 2007
Today was a fruitful day in terms of planning, if not of actually composing notes. I worked out the second B section with the three decelerandos to quarter = 48. Essentially what I tried to do was figure out sequences that will allow for the three tempo layers to merge. Eventually with some effort I determined sequences such that there could be steady decelerandos among all the layers. This involved determining the mathematical sequences that would yield these. So for the layer of quintuplets, I determined that 12 sixteenths at 72 equals 15 sixteenths at 90. I then needed to figure out a series of durations that totaled would begin with one beat at 90 and slow down to one beat at 24. So if I take 22 measures of 4/4 at 90 this yields me 110 quintuplet quarters, multiplied by four I have 440 quintuplet sixteenths. If I allow each duration to repeat four times before slowing down slightly, which is necessary for audibility, I am able to exact the decelerando over 22 measures. Here’s the math, 4 x 5 means four times five quintuplet sixteenths:
(4 x 5) + (4 x 6) + (4 x 7) + . . . + (4 x 14) + (4 x 15) = 440.
It is necessary to use each duration more than once, or else the longer durations are reached too quickly.
For the layer of triplets (quarter=108), the same amount of time gives me 528 sixteenths. The sequence here is by necessity a bit more complex.
3(4) + 2(5) + 2(6) + . . . + 2(12) + 3(13) + 3(14) + 4(15) + 4(16) + 5(17) + 5(18)
I tried several versions of this and opted for this one because I thought it had the smoothest slowdown. Similar decisions were made for the quarter note layer.
For the layer of quarter notes there is also not as elegant a solution as the quintuplets. 352 sixteenths is the magic number.
6(4) + 5(5) + 5(6) + . . . + 5(11) + 5(12)
My plan now is lay out the scaffolding in a separate document. I can then compose out the harmonies and orchestrate them according to the ensemble change scheme.
The scaffolding is in place it now remains to compose out over it. This will lead into (or be interrupted by) the next ritornello. I’m thinking of doing some sort of a fast lane – slow lane feature for the third B section. Before the triumphant final ritornello.
I’ve also laid out the proportions for the various section lengths.

Carla and I have reservations at a fancy Sushi restaurant on the East Side to try and take in a new level of Sushi experience.

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12 February 2007

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.

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10 February 2007

Composing Today

9 February 2007
The piece has reached a strange place. The second ritornello is effectively complete and I’ve moved into what would be the clarinet solo section. Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time getting a sense of what the sound of this area of the piece is. In some ways I’m confused about the larger scale architecture, even though I’m settled on the smaller scale architecture is for the work. Coming out of the opening ritornello is a 30 second section in which the entire ensemble plays in a complex contrapuntal manner eventually leading into the upper reaches before petering out and the piano enters solo. After this second ritornello, the clarinet has a small trio with the violin and flute in long notes accompanied by the nipple gongs and bass drum. This is interrupted by the entire ensemble, as happens in the piano solo, but this time it falls apart, two chords with the nipple gong and then that’s where I’m stuck. In thinking about this now – my initial feeling was to have the ensemble try to build to another climax, but I’m not sure.

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06 February 2007

Composing Today

6 February 2007
A small entry tonight. More work on the second ritornello and a thought that perhaps something radical – likely tonally – should happen in the next set of sections. I’ve, I believe, laid out the extent of the duration of this ritornello, though likely not the actual details. Have added some more percussion to the mix – 4 nipple gongs. Not a super productive, but a full few hours of work nonetheless, both in cleaning up and creating new.

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05 February 2007

Composing Today

5 February 2007

It’s hard to really get down a sense of what was accomplished today. I took the ending off and then proceeded to work out the second ritornello – moving, crushing, repeating, doing all sorts of things to try to recapture the spirit of the opening, I’m not sure I really got there, and not sure in fact, that it is necessary to do so, perhaps the spirit is really all there is and it can be degraded somewhat, in some ways the final ritornello is a degraded version of the opening. I worked also on that pesky viola section working and building around it so that it can provide a suitable return for the ritornello. I think it works, it involves some noodling in the piano in the very highest registers and then some material derived from that noodling in the bottom of the bass and bassoon combined with the cello chopping away in its own manner. The cello really seems to have a life of its own in this piece, being apart even when it is supposed to be part of a group, I’m sometimes like that, so no reason the cello shouldn’t be. The brass then enters in and a bunch of contrapuntal lines that ascend up to the whistles of the piccolo and the reentry of the ensemble. The overall effect is of a rather tight harmonic labyrinth that leads into the ritornello, but I don’t know how planned it was. I’m coming to trust that sometimes I should just go with my instincts, even if I’m not entirely sure of what they are trying to tell me – there is nothing that can be lost by doing so, if it sounds terrible I can always delete it and try again. I do however, need to be a bit more careful with some of the canonic utilities which can sometimes really mess with the rhythmic treatment of the piece. Usually, I accept this randomness in order that it may open my mind to something new, but sometimes it makes a mistake that isn’t so good and that I don’t catch until its too late. Nonetheless, I’m accepting all this in the process of composing. No matter how much we plan, things will happen and I have to accept them and work with them. The process of composing is a part of the composition and this dialectic of freedom and order and freedom within order and freedom straining against order is very much a part of the piece.

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04 February 2007

Composing Today

3 February 2007

Cleaned up some more and worked on what was to be the second ritornello. Unfortunately, or fortunately and with a little help from some of my canonic utilities, I seemed to have composed what will be the end of the piece. It is a glorious, almost ecstatic gloss on the horn material that ebbs and flows in tempo, in harmony, in microtonal character that is quite lovely to me. Perhaps this section I’ve just written will serve as an ecstatic summation after the difficulties of the piece. “Que Vida!” I’ve decided to stop work on it completely, save it as something else in order that it will flow properly when I am able to return to it. In the meantime, I think I have to give the second ritornello another chance – I guess it is not a bad thing.

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31 January 2007

Composing Today

31 January
Not the best day composing, but also not the worst. I’ve been busy at the third section and cleaning up the opening, and the previous sections. I’m a little bit flummoxed by the direction of the piece, it slows down for a moment and then picks up again – overall the effect is not that strange in sound leading into what seems like a cadence. What I need to focus on in this next section, the viola solo is eliding out of the cadence and into the next bit, the “horn” ritornello which is slated to appear after this viola section. The additions today were relatively minor, but fill out the flute section. My thoughts are to have the viola continue through the cadence with percussion, like two measures, maybe three of a duo for the two before the entry of the other instruments. I’ve decided to build the entry in accelerating fashion. According to my chart, between the flute section and the viola section we have a change of mensuration – the whole ensemble’s tempo is ratcheted up to 5/4 of the initial tempo – from 72 to 90. So my thought is to build up the speed of this 12 measure bit from 48 (now 60) to 72 (now 90) to 90 (now 112.5) to 108 (now 135). This I think will build to a suitable climax for the return of the “horn” ritornello.
I must get ready to run off to New Jersey to run a choir rehearsal for the church I’m playing at now.

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30 January 2007

Composing Today

30 January 2007

Made some good progress on the third section with the flute solo. The solo is written out and some, at least half of the accompaniment. There are some nice ensembles that are brought about by the switch of the piano into the flute’s role in this section: Bass, Horn, Trumpet; Trombone, Clarinet, Violin; Percussion, Viola, Cello; and Piano, Oboe, Bassoon. I’ve given the Piano ensemble tiny notes widely spaced and slow with the oboe and bassoon holding these out. In the violin trio, I’ve taken the tremolos within the flute part and split the difference to create the three lines, the trombone provides a nice foundation. I was talking with David Cohen yesterday and he made a comment about how in the large ensemble you can have such a play of instrumental colors and I think the ensemble change rotation did this to a certain extent. To provide more colors in the trio, I think the solo substitution rule is a good one. To wit, it takes the solo instrument for each section – solo is a relative term – and has it replace the new soloist in the instrument rotation. So for instance, the first soloist was the percussion, so in the second section, the percussion takes the place of the next soloist in the instrumental numbering. In the second section our soloist is the piano (#9) so the percussion becomes #9 for the remainder of the piece. The piano when it reenters the traffic patterns of the instrumental rotation replaces the next soloist in this case the flute (#1) for the remainder of the piece. The flute will replace the next soloist, I’m leaning toward the viola (#10). Within each section, I’ve been laying out the entrances/exits of the soloists vaguely intuitively, thinking of the narrative of the section. In the third section we’ve had a tempo merge and the normative tempo is now the quarter-note at 72. I’m also leaving the choice of soloists up to intuition – though as the piece progresses my choices will be more limited.

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29 January 2007

Composing Today

29 January 2007

Worked out the second section today and I’m rather pleased with it. The percussion has moved from wood sonorities to membrane sonorities – in this case, I’ve got a bass drum, two congas and a bongo. Perhaps I should consider a tighter headed drum than the bass drum. I was thinking today about the tension that results from what is a very complicated structure whose surface details are remarkably free compositionally. In some cases the rules laid down by the structure are ignored by the instruments or only followed slightly throughout. There are tempo layers, but this is not an early Nono strict mapping, instead it’s a rule that in practice is avoided. Consider again the chaotic streets of a third-world city. There are traffic rules, it is only that the rules are avoided or else there are so many conditional to the rules that they are effectively not rules at all. Perhaps then the conflict between the rules ad the instruments choosing to follow them or not is another aspect of this piece, though I don’t think its an aspect that can have much narrative import. Rather, the simple fact that the structure has been prepared makes adherence to it itself a narrative element and vice versa. I recall how Schoenberg was asked about notes that didn’t match up with his rows and he accepted the “wrong” notes as the “right” notes, not for a narrative sense – as in this anomaly is a key to a structurally important moment – but rather in the play of inspiration inside the work.

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26 January 2007

composing today

26 January 2007
Again my intention was to flush out the second section with the piano lead. Instead, again I got caught in cleaning up some of the earlier material as well as parts of the piano transition which I think works well now. I continued the piano section to its conclusion, that is, the beginning of what will be the next section, and laid out the location for the various mini-trios, they are only about three measures each, in order to get a sense of what the dramatic flow of this 10 or so measures. We’re at about the 2:30 point, maybe one fourth of the way through the piece. I think I need to take down the density some in the next section as it is still remarkably dense. I think perhaps I can do this with some longer melodic lines rather than the fanfare-type lines I’ve been working with. I added a smidge of heterophony with the clarinet relating to the piano, which I haven’t been able to enter yet to hear it. All in all, I’m much more pleased with the piece than I was about a week ago. I hope to have by the end of the month reached at least the beginning of the fourth section – the one-third point.

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25 January 2007

Composing today

25 January 2007
My intention today was to compose out the second section with the piano solo, but instead I ended up spending a good deal of time decorating out the opening horn section which now is actually quite wild. The static harmonies allowed me to add in a number of melodic lines and articulations of the harmony without disrupting the overall claustrophobic flow of the section. In face it gives it a lot more momentum. I’ve eliminated a number of the percussion “breaks” – there were a few measures of solo percussion in favor of keeping the energy full throughout. In a sense the end result now is something like the end of Ameriques by Varese. It also, I think, makes a better transition to the next section in which everyone is trying to fight for their space. There is now one measure of percussion and piano solo instead of the one measure of silence that was there before. In this way the second section seems to flow from the initial “horns” rather than being something separate. It also makes it quite powerful when it cleans out at the end of the first section. There is something ecstatic about the opening section that I am rather pleased with – an ecstatic-ness borne of chaos and noise, which I think is much in keeping with the metaphor of traffic that is guiding the composition. I remember on those crazy streets of Varanasi just at a certain point taking an almost perverse delight in the cacophony of the streets, it is that moment when one gives in to the craziness and at the same time could care less about the craziness that things start to click. I feel a certain sense of this as well in this piece. The opening forces the listener to “give in” to the sound. I had for a moment thought of having some sort of striving type opening to the piece in the manner of Suntreader of Ruggles, but while certain melodic lines have that sort of feel – in the piano as mentioned in yesterday’s entry, I opted against opening the piece as such. We can work toward the unity rather than have it given to us at the beginning.

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24 January 2007

Composing again

Today began work on the second section – after adding in the final bit of the first section, the percussion. The idea is that after the initial outburst of everyone I wanted to thin down, fortuitously it turned out that way before a varied shot of the horn motive and then have the piano take the solo role in the second section. When I say solo, I don’t mean in a traditional homophonic sense. Rather, what I envision is as en ensemble of its own tat the others are forced to interact with. The percussion took that in the first section. So now the percussion replaces the piano in the ensemble numbering scheme. Presumably I should then keep the percussion at that number until it is replaced – so in the third section the piano will replace the instrument that takes over the solo part, I’m thinking now that the next solo will go to the piccolo/flute. The sextuplet tempo layer has been eliminated. Tomorrow I will work around the piano solo to build the various trios/quartets for this second section.
My feeling on the material in this section are long arching, crusty lines, some of which develop from the viola/cello material of section 1.

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19 January 2007

I’ll begin with a few words about this blog My intent is to use this to document several of my ongoing projects. First, the composition of my latest work, a piece for large ensemble to be played by the Columbia Sinfonietta under Jeff Milarsky on April 23rd at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. This piece will also be the focus of my dissertation and I thought it would be helpful if I were to write down some of my compositional decisions and the reasons behind them in preparation for writing them up in dissertation format.

Second, I will use this space to store my listening notes. I keep a rather strict listening regimen in which I sit with new pieces – recordings and scores – and listen to them each morning. I have been doing this for about ten years on and off. Originaly it was to acquaint myself with the major works of the Western tradition. Later, I began to get more comprehensive setting out to study particular composers in depth. In this regard, I found the best way to do this was to listen to everything they wrote in the chronological order that it was written. Now this becomes problematic when we reach works that have never been recorded. In this case, I am usually able to obtain a score and can have a look at the piece. To date, I have looked at the music of Schutz (ongoing – many works have been dfficult to obtain); Schumann, Berlioz, Messiaen, Ligeti, Carter (this ran into serious problems when I was unable to get scores and recordings of the music from much of the 90s onward) and Stravinsky. I have also been engaged currently with the music of Xenakis, Lutoslawski, Debussy, Schoenberg, Scelsi, Crawford Seeger, Copland, Brahms, Crumb, Vivier, Grisey, Ockeghem and Nono and to a lesser extent Ives, Britten, Ruggles, Ferneyhough, Boulez and Berg. I expanded the list exponentially when I got tired of listening to the same composers everyday. Lately, I have been listening to a lot of Xenakis for a variety of rather dull reasons. At a certain point, I realized that I would benefit more from this activity if I were to keep notes about the pieces I heard. These I will post here as well. I don’t claim that these notes are authoritative, nor that they are even interesting (I have my good moments and bad moments and some pieces provoke a better reaction), but perhaps someone might be interested. In many cases, I imagine they will be among the few things written about these pieces.

Third, I will use this to reflect on the process of getting an academic job in music composition, a daunting process to say the least, as well as discussing various other standard blog issues – performances, food and so forth. It will likely take some time for me to get the multimedia aspect of the whole thing down, so (if anyone is reading this) bear with me.

With that in mind….

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