Wild alarums

This morning, and just when needed, I found the "war's wild alarums" sketch. It's on a page which it shares with four other sketched bits. (Of these five patches of material, four have made it into the piece intact. And the fifth, the nominal reject, is an earlier version of another sketch on the same page.)

This "wild alarums" material was thus quite an early discovery for the piece, sketched while I was still working the second stanza; and when as yet I had no clear sense of the music for the fourth or fifth stanzas. This multi-sketch page has rested in my notebook all this time; and yet, it's such a busy page, for a day or two I half feared that I had mislaid it. It remained a fairly specific artifact in my inner ear, though; and I am well content with the contrast against, and continuity from out, the preceding stanzas. (As recorded here in the blog, I only really discovered how I should set stanzas 4 & 5 this past week or so.)

Mentally, I am starting to feel that the end of this score is in sight.  And it feels like The Mystic Trumpeter may ultimately clock in at somewhere about 18-20 minutes. We shall thus need another piece, ca. 6 minutes in duration, to fill out the October program, a flute/clarinet duet which I may call Après-mystères. Starting to feel ideas emerge for that one.

Already, thoughts are beginning to coalesce for the clarinet/marimba duet, just what everyone was expecting. A 5-minute piece is requested; and as I wrote to the clarinetist (who suggested that the percussionist is a mite difficult to please), I'll write the piece as I want it, so that one person, at least, will be happy with it. May sound strange, but part of the inspirational energy for this one appears to stem from writing for some clarinetist other. (Although, it should not surprise me if at some point I do play it, myself.)