19 November 2013

Hopper Theory

Now one might think that a fellow busy with a variety of non-musical commitments day in, day out, is just spinning pipe-dream after pipe-dream by maintaining a number of compositional projects as works-in-progress. (Quite apart from White Nights, which is very much Its Own Thing, on my desk at the moment there are, waiting for completion, in chronological order by inception: the Credo; some short recorder and harpsichord pieces; My Island Home [percussion ensemble]; Feeling the Burn [flute and marimba]; and Plotting [violin and harpsichord].) But all the pieces which need to be written (which is most of them, and quite possibly all of them), I will have written, in time; and once I form a fair idea of a piece, it pretty much lives in a space somewhere in the Henning brain, where it waits upon me until I may visit again and warm up the kettle.

Now, the Credo, for which I may just possibly find some interest in a choir away south, I am leaving sit for a short while, as I consider (a little) if the present state of the piece (about half of the text is set now) is quite what I wish.

I am therefore at liberty to focus attention elsewhere, and (not at all surprisingly, really) I wrote up a bit of a marimba canon on this morning's train, for My Island Home. All in all, I suspect that I may wind up wrapping up the percussion ensemble piece first . . . and then, in all likelihood, the piece for Paul Cienniwa and EmmaLee Holmes-Hicks.

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