The on-screen start

Have been puttering with pen and paper for a week or more; the time came to start messing about in the Sibelius environment.  Feels like a good start has gotten been.

To roll back the video tape: In the Artist’s Studio (There’s a wide world in there) is a scored (or, is in the process of being scored) for E^b sopranino clarinet, three oboes, alto flute, English horn, B^b tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, four horns, two tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba & harp.

Although I have some mental flexibility, and am willing to go wherever the material seems to want to take me . . . at present I am thinking of a 20-minute piece.  When you’ve a new piece, and a large-ish ensemble, a certain critial mass of rehearsal time is demanded.  My feeling is that if you have a large group of people sweating to realize a new score, they deserve more of a musical payoff than a five-minute squib.

Having said that: no, offhand I do not know of anyone who will “need” the piece, of anyone who will even necessarily read it.  It is the piece I want to write, now.  That, Gentle Reader, is artistic freedom.  And the fact that I write the music out of my own motivation, and in a condition of perfect freedom (which is to say, I myself determine what if any limits the composition must abide by) is a flame which will burn in the heart of the piece, so that its very integrity will be one of its attractions.