Dear Blog,
Over the past several weeks, I have actually been unusually productive in composition. I know that posting here would have been the right place to document the gradual progress, but . . . there it is, I've just gone ahead and written it all, and let's pick it up from here, okay?
On 10 March, Paul Cienniwa directed the First Church Boston choir in the première of the Kyrie, from what is now a Mass-in-progress for unaccompanied choir. (I have substantial sketches for the Credo, much of which dates from visiting my brother and sister-in-law in South Carolina.) That's a piece which may have legs
I finished the unaccompanied clarinet piece, Thoreau in Concord Jail (Op.109) for performance at King's Chapel on 12 March. Although I certainly wish I had practiced more, I think the performance was on the whole creditable. My only substantial dissatisfaction with my inaugural account of the piece is, that I 'rushed' it. However, (as with the Kyrie) there will be a next time, and the performance record of the piece will improve with repetition.
When Thoreau was done, on Sunday the 10th I circled back to Carola Emrich-Fischer of the Libella Quartet to be reminded when scores were due for their call; and the answer proved to be, Saturday the 16th. Since I already had (some) sketches and (substantial) mental notions for a setting of Poe's "Annabel Lee" (a poem which I have known, it seems, from the egg), I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. The finished score was completed and submitted on time, and has been selected for their 25 April concert at the Armory in Somerville, Mass.
Then, as I had promised Dr Timothy Phillips of Troy, Alabama a piece for his clarinet choir (and because the idea of writing a piece for 15 clarinets, including one Eb sopranino, two bass clarinets, and one Bb contrabass, was entirely too inviting), I settled in to work on Misapprehension. No word yet on whether a performance will result, but a composition in which I take no small measure of pride has been delivered.
All this activity left an Organ Sonata which I had begun late in 2012 incomplete, apart from a first movement which, though ostensibly finished, I modified in the odd detail some four or five times before settling on a form upon which I refuse to tinker further. So yesterday I finished the second movement; about to get to actual work (as opposed to the odd sketch) on the third.
Dear Blog, I shall try to post more currently henceforth . . . .
Cheers,
~k.
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